not closed by process rules [was: So, what's left?]

just one clarification:

Arjun Ray wrote:
[...]

> Sure.  The fundamental flaw of the process is its closed nature.
> When I look at things from the W3C that have really worked, the
> pattern I see is a WG (ok, closed by process rules)

There's no W3C-wide rule that working groups must be closed.
W3C process *allows* working groups to be closed, but doesn't
require them to be.

Each activity has its own structure. The proceedings of many
of the WAI WGs are publicly readable (and writeable, I think) for
example.
	http://www.w3.org/WAI/GL/

The HTML WG has been member-confidential for a long time, but nothing
says it has to stay that way; charters generally last 18 months
or so, and then they get renewed/updated/whatever. The HTML WG
could be rechartered to have public proceedings at any time,
if we thought we could get the engineers from member companies
to participate under those conditions.

[...]

> What's bothersome is that, had you not mentioned your <alt> proposal,
> the first time many of us would have seen such a thing for the first
> time would have been some huge working draft or whatever dropped on
> us, with some short deadline for commentary.

short deadline? Eventually, we issue a last call with a finite
deadline, but that's not before the spec has been out for review
for quite some time. When did we release a draft with a short
deadline?

>  Too much time gets
> wasted essentially reproducing discussions.

There's some truth to that.

> We're lucky to have someone like you, offering information, but *by
> process rules* this is an exception.

I don't see how it's an exception. Which part of the process are you
referring to?

> That sucks.

I suppose it could be better, but it's quite a challenge to actually
get things to operate differently.

-- 
Dan Connolly
http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/