Re: Where people have discussions (was Re: The History of <aside> for sidebars)

Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
> 
> This one is definitely with co-Chair hat on...
> 
> On Sep 4, 2009, at 4:08 PM, John Foliot wrote:
> 
>> If ever there was a damning indictment of WHAT WG's use of the IRC
>> back-channel to 'make decisions' without due consultation, here it is.
>>
>> It is now water long-gone under the bridge, but even recent discussion
>> (http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20090904#l-322 ) shows that this
>> lesson has not been learned.
>>
>> IF YOU HAVE PROPOSALS - POST THEM PUBLICLY (and at both your club and W3C
>> mailing lists) - play by your own rules!
> 
> Just to make it clear to everyone: 
> 
> We prefer people to make technical proposals in official Working Group 
> channels, such as the public-html mailing list or w3c bugzilla. However, 
> people are free to discuss technical issues regarding HTML5 wherever 
> they wish, even if that conversation involves the editor. And even if 
> that discussion is on a logged IRC channel, on twitter, in blog 
> comments, or on a private invite-only mailing list. It's healthier if a 
> lot of that discussion happens here, but you don't have to stop thinking 
> about HTML5 in other media.
> 
> If anyone has a technical disagreement with something in the spec, or a 
> question about why something works a certain way, please do voice it. If 
> you have a complaint about where people hold their conversations, then I 
> would ask you to please hold your fire.
> 
> Now, it's possible for conversation to retreat so much into fragmented 
> spaces that it becomes impossible to follow the work and participate 
> meaningfully. If that actually happens in a concrete case, please point 
> it out to the chairs. However, I don't think that is happening on the 
> current round of discussing <aside> and the other structural elements. I 
> see lots of healthy technical discussion on the list. So let's focus 
> more on that constructive technical discussion and less on process issues.
> 
> If anyone wants to discuss this topic further, please follow up 
> privately or on www-archive.

I'll take a co-chair's exception to the last sentence :-)

I simply want to endorse Maciej's message.  This discussion happened to 
take place on IRC between Ian and Lachy, but it could just have easily 
taken place F2F between Ian and John at the TPAC.

Forbidding discussion elsewhere just tends to drive it underground.  So 
instead of forbidding it, the rule is that no final decisions on the 
content of the W3C spec will be made outside of public-html, and every 
attempt will be made to use subject lines, copying people who have 
expressed an interest, and the weekly teleconference to be inclusive.

Should Ian have decided to act on this thought, and if somebody were to 
disagree with that action, simply file a bug report.  And should the bug 
report not be resolved to your satisfaction, there will be ample 
opportunity to escalate the issue further.

> Thanks,
> Maciej

- Sam Ruby

Received on Friday, 4 September 2009 23:49:53 UTC