Re: STILL Open--48-Hour Consensus Call: Request to reconsider Alt Techniques Location

On 02/22/2012 04:28 PM, Janina Sajka wrote:
> Hi, Sam:
>
> Sam Ruby writes:
>> On 02/21/2012 02:19 PM, Janina Sajka wrote:
>>> Colleagues:
>>>
>>> Inasmuch as this 48 hour consensus was called on a Friday afternoon in
>>> front of a 3-day U.S. holliday weekend, the call is still open. Please
>>> feel free to respond until end of business Boston Time on Wednesday, 22
>>> February.
>>
> The extension relates to whether Steve's CP gets TF consensus backing.
> Is there some other issue here?

The original deadline for such requests was February 11th:

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2012Feb/0082.html

The last the chairs heard (on Thursday, February 16th) was that we were 
going to get the request on Monday February 20th:

http://www.w3.org/2012/02/16-html-wg-minutes.html#item10

This extension, without consulting with the chairs, surprised us.

Be that as it may, the request has been reviewed by the chairs and is 
additionally starting to get substantive feedback on public-html. 
Independent of the good questions asked by all, the primary question the 
chairs are focused on at the moment is: is there new information being 
presented which, had it been available at the time of the original 
decision, would have materially affected the decision if unrebutted?

>> Despite this extension, the chairs have decided to proceed with
>> publishing their evaluation of the Change Proposal as it exists
>> today:
>>
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2012Feb/0293.html
>>
> 1.) I don't see the very first item the CP mentions being considered. Was
> it? namely, relevance to many technologies, not simply HTML? Did you
> have a position on that?

Can you point out the new information here?

> 2.)	The CP asserts a systemic problem for which the cited bugs are
> illustrative. I see your response on the individual bugs, but not on the
> global question. In fact the assertion, as I understand it, is that
> escalating these individually is counter-productive and unlikely to
> achieve the needed remedy, a systematic elimination of specific
> illustrative guidance in the HTML specs. We assert the specs should
> define lexical markup, not authoring guidance, as the evidence--since
> calendar year 2007--suggests this guidance is often unsatisfactory, and
> historical efforts to correct it have been frustrated. Were we then to
> escalate each individual issue, it's highly likely we would achieve
> reasonable results on some, but there's no basis for an expectation that
> all would be properly addressed. Hence, no escalation on on individual
> issues because of the historical pattern, and rather the request to
> defer to the appropriate guidance document--which exists because of the
> history, as the earlier CP pointed out.

Looking at the specific bugs cited, much of the information isn't new, 
nor did we find a pattern in the set of bugs where one or more were 
adopted, one or more never resulted in a tangible proposal, and others 
were not pursued.

Can you succinctly state what the pattern is here, what you believe to 
be the root cause is for that pattern, and show how this proposal 
addresses that root cause?

> 3.)	The April decision suggested a new WCAG might be grounds for
> reconsideration. The CP points to how that was a misunderstanding of
> WCAG, and how current work actually satisfies the suggestion the Chairs
> reached last April, howbeit from incorrect reasoning. Is there a
> response for this here somewhere that I'm missing.

This was not listed by the Change Proposal in "The grounds for 
re-opening" section.  Feel free to update the Change Proposal.

Here is the relevant portion of the decision that you cited:

   * Publication of a new version of WCAG that contains sufficient
      concrete examples relevant to HTML5 which would serve as a suitable
      reference.

If you do update the Change Proposal, I encourage you to identify the 
specific concrete examples relevant to HTML5 that you suggest as 
replacement for each of the sections that the Change Proposal identifies 
as one that should be removed from the HTML5 specification.  In cases 
where the recommendations differ, please also identify the use cases, 
substantive arguments, and rationale that supports the version of the 
recommendation as it exists in the relevant WCAG documents.

> This is not meant to be an exhaustive analysis, but I think these are
> three major misunderstandings between the CP and the analysis cited.
>
> Janina

- Sam Ruby

Received on Thursday, 23 February 2012 13:56:18 UTC