Re: [csswg-drafts] [meta] Overview page on drafts.csswg.org not updating (#12743)

> (I went on vacation just as this blew up, so pretend this response isn't actually unaccountably delayed.)

No Tab, I'm not going to pretend this response isn't delayed. I'm glad you got to have a vacation, but time didn't stop while you were away. During that interval many people, myself included, have been working to resolve this, and the issue is almost closed. Your chiming in now does nothing to help move this forward.

You're also responding to a discussion between two people, neither of which is yourself, and taking the side of someone who has already (privately) apologized for their comment.

Furthermore, pretty much everything you're saying here is wrong.

> FWIW, yes, I do think that's the best answer. 

So you think that the person taking advantage of someone else gets to dictate the response of the victim. Noted.

> You and I discussed the servers and replacement services as recently as TPAC in November, just a few months ago, and you did not at that time express anything near this level of frustration that you've apparently been simmering with for (it appears) years.

Yes, we did discuss the servers at TPAC. During that discussion you personally assured me that work was underway and the situation would be resolved soon. Much of what we discussed hasn't happened, and what did, was only recent, with little to no communication or coordination with me. Meanwhile, demands on me have continued.

My frustration levels have also increased significantly since TPAC, due to further mistreatment. I can't go back in time and talk about things that hadn't happened yet.

> You have been publicly treating it as a relatively low-priority thing with nothing like a deadline that would be great to handle "sometimes", so everyone continued to treat it as a relatively low-priority thing with nothing like a deadline that would be great to handle "sometime".

This is absolutely not true. At TPAC I distinctly said that this has gone on for far too long and the servers need to be replaced sooner rather than later.

I've also been publicly asking for help with the servers for *years*. At no point did I *ever* state this was low priority and that I'd be happy spending hundreds of dollars per month and countless hours of my own time for an indefinite period.

> It would have been 100% fine to have, for example, announced at TPAC "hey guys, this shit sucks and I'm about done with it, I'm gonna stop handling any of this in March. We've been discussing how to move off of my servers for a while, it's time to step those up and make it happen.". 

It would also have been 100% reasonable to me to simply switch off the servers without warning and sell the domains to the highest bidder to recoup my expenses. It's been over 8 **YEARS**. You'll note I didn't do that.

> Or announcing that at the last f2f, which would have at least given us more than a month. 

So I was supposed to spend another few thousand dollars of my own money and take unpaid time off to attend a f2f for your convenience?

> Or not at any meeting, just with a message to the WG to that effect, sometime multiple weeks ago. 

I've talked about this with the WG so many times, with so little result, that it became clear to me there was no point in engaging that way any more. And again, you don't get to dictate the timing of my response to being mistreated.

> It was 0% fine to have started quietly ignoring any of the problems and just letting things fall over when no one knew that this was apparently bothering you so much, 

Asking for help wasn't working, another approach was entirely warranted and entirely appropriate.

You'll also note, that while I didn't respond to every message, the servers kept running (as well as they could manage the insane load of the crawlers they were under without my investing more money in faster machines). This didn't happen by accident or by my simply ignoring them.

I also put in more effort to ensure a smooth transition to new services, including making more work for myself by pushing back on W3C systeam when it was clear they were making decisions without WG input or had the best interests of the WG in mind.

> and then announcing a very short timeline (3 weeks) for getting everything off your servers before you shut things down, and doing so, as Oriol said, buried in an incident thread rather than a top-level message.

And again, it's my timeline to make. It could have easily been 0 weeks of notice many years ago.

And, as I already said, other people had already criticized me for not responding to messages buried in threads. So is this an acceptable method of communication, or not? You don't get to have it both ways.

> This was an unprofessional way to handle this entire situation, 

This hasn't been my "profession" for years. Demanding (your perception of) "professional" behavior from an unpaid volunteer is absurd.

> but worse, it was unkind. 

So taking advantage of my generosity was kind? Not responding to my requests for help was kind? Demanding I put in more work, and more money was kind? 

> You've been a part of this WG and a friend to many of us for many years. Silently holding in all of this frustration and letting it build until it reached this breaking point was not the behavior I would have expected from you.

Friendship is a two-way street. Without reciprocation, it's exploitation. I think what I've done for the WG has gone well above and beyond what anyone could have reasonably expected. I've not been silent about the servers, you haven't been listening.

> You took a responsibility onto yourself many years ago, 

I took on that responsibility when I was being paid to, and when the costs of the servers were being covered by my employer.

> and it's both (a) reasonable for people to continue to rely on that as long as you allow it, 

No, it's not reasonable for companies worth collectively trillions of dollars to expect an individual to maintain critical infrastructure they rely on. Even when I volunteered to do so.

> and (b) reasonable for you to communicate that you can no longer shoulder that responsibility, and to get others to take it up. 

I did. Many times.

> I'm glad that several WG members have been able to emergency-divert their time to keep these necessary resources going. It should never have been an emergency, tho; we should have had a friendly handover with some reasonable planning.

Your opportunity to plan a friendly handover started 8 years ago.

The fact that a few people had to scramble for a few weeks pales in comparison to the work I've put in over the years and the demands that have been made on my time over the years. The emergency was created by a lack of action on your part.

> I know you've been low-interaction with the WG for several years now, as your interests have moved elsewhere. 

No Tab, it's not because my interests have moved elsewhere, it's burnout. A result of shouldering too many demands for nothing in return. A friend would have recognized that.

> I appreciate what you've continued to do for us, and the times we've hung out together as friends. This just wasn't a very friendly thing to do, in several ways.

See above. You keep using the word "friend", I don't think it means what you think it means.

> FWIW, I'm happy to take over hosting the csswg.org domain name for now, if you want to transfer it. Now that we've moved the wiki over to a GitHub repo, the "wiki user registration" issue should be moot now, so you can either change the DNS records or ask me to do it after transferring.

The domains are another matter entirely and we'll have other conversations about those.


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Received on Thursday, 5 March 2026 18:41:08 UTC