RE: Features and fixes incompatible with backward compatibility

David Singer:
> ... I think it would be of great help to this mailing list if we all re-read
> the previous discussions on this topic, before we post much more.

Unfortunately, this is a very tall order.  And for most (employed) humans is simply unachievable as the mountain continuously rises.

What's needed is a human effort to coalesce prior discussions *and conclusions* into a central location, remove redundancy, etc.  The specifications codify the versioned "answers" but not the why or how those answers were reached.


On a related note, discussions often trail off and never get answered.  For example, there are several occasions where a long discussion followed a proposal (for example: splitting background-position).  The last two or three posts (regarding scenarios and issues) goes completely unanswered and (to my knowledge) undocumented beyond being "in the archive".  As an author of some of those "unanswered last posts," I find it very frustrating -- especially when the discussion resets to zero again and I have to dig up my old posts and link them repeatedly.  Often the subsequent response doesn't move things forward much at all, and then silence returns.

Part of scaling up (people and modules) requires having a memory of contributions and efficiently incorporating them into the evolution of the product, in this case the CSS specifications.  I often feel like this forum is incredibly lossy in that regard, which is disrespectful of people's time and effort.  I'm not suggesting chasing anyone down with torches; it doesn't really matter who is at fault (if anyone at all).  Rather I'm just pointing it out as something that could and should be improved.

Received on Tuesday, 21 February 2012 02:49:10 UTC