[csswg-drafts] WG Agendas Should Take Advantage of Contextal Information In Addition to Issue Numbers

fantasai has just created a new issue for https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts:

== WG Agendas Should Take Advantage of Contextal Information In Addition to Issue Numbers ==
Chairs keep posting agendas like:
  https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2018Feb/0068.html

Witness Item #10:
>    10. [css-sizing] Percentage sizing section is kind of vague
>    https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/1132

There is no context provided: the title is just the title of the issue, and the link just drops you at the top of the issue, which starts of with some very confused discussion that intimidates anyone who wants to actually look at what's up for discussion.

This is was the approach to drawing up the agenda despite that fantasai

- added a comment summarizing the state of the issue when tagging it Agenda+ in https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/1132#issuecomment-363623845
- summarized the state of the spec and the purpose of the needed WG discussion in https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2018Feb/0009.html
- has requested multiple times that the chairs make an effort to use the provided context when compiling the agenda rather than just linking to the top of the issue and copying its title
- in this case, even reviewed the issue with the WG on the [previous telecon](https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2018Feb/0045.html), leaving a week to review, so that the WG could would be familiar with the issue and could quickly dispose the topic

the chairs nonetheless ignored all the context and copied the issue title and dropped only a link to the top of the discussion.

And thus the WG looked at the issue on the call, decided it was too complicated and scary (because without any context, and dropped into the top of the confusing start of the discussion, it is), and skipped the topic. Because nobody actually understood what needed to be discussed. Because the chairs *elided* all of the context that came with the Agenda+ request.

Thus fantasai is filing this issue as a totally unnecessary *regression* in the CSSWG process due to the move to GitHub, since previously she could link to a specific email (rather than the top of the thread) to be added to the agenda, and could include in that email all the context for everyone to understand an issue, and the chairs would _use that message URL_ as the topic to discuss; but now there is no way to do so _because the chairs refuse to use more specific URLs_. Even if there is a comment provided with the Agenda+ request summarizing the issue, even if there is an email providing context for the discussion, each of which has a URL that could have been linked to, the chairs continue to *refuse* to provide that contextual information and insist on a) copying the issue title directly, even if the topic at hand is more specific and b) linking to the top of the issue, wasting the effort of the person requesting the topic and trying to provide context, and wasting the time of everyone who wishes to participate in the discussion but has to unnecessarily wade through the morass of previous discussion first.

Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/2395 using your GitHub account

Received on Monday, 5 March 2018 07:57:03 UTC