"voting" Re: results of HTML 5 text, editor, name questions

On Thu, 10 May 2007 14:22:40 +0100, Gregory J. Rosmaita <oedipus@hicom.net> wrote:
...
> Question: does every member of the WG get a vote, even if there are
> a number of representatives from companies X, Y, and Z?  should they
> not have to come to consensus on a vote amongst themselves before
> casting a formal vote?  otherwise, this straw polling system could
> well prove unrepresentative, in that if vendors want to carry the
> day, they can flood the poll with bullet votes.

In a group of 400 people, Opera would need to subscribe every employee in order to have almost half... W3C works by consensus (or as close as it can get). So flooding with votes is not meant to work as a tactic. And with so many invited experts who presumably have very different opinions, it is unlikely that it works well in practice either.

For what it is worth, Opera's 8 or 9 subscribed employees are following the work, but our decisions are made and communicated by Lars Erik Bolstad. Our opinion is that of a browser maker. There are very few of these on the group (and as far as I know we are the only directly represented maker of a mobile browser), but there are some cases where they are important. On the other hand, the massive number of invited experts would, in a simple majority vote, swamp the implementors of browsers and authoring tools combined.

If the group resolves something that is really unimplementable (for example for footprint reasons or because there are serious problems developing a practical interface) browsers simply won't implement it. However, we hope this will not be the case, and we will explain issues that arise in order to ensure that decisions are made based on the best available information about what is practical, and look for the best possible solutions to problems. That's one of the reasons we are participating in this group, rather than simply waiting for the results...

cheers

Chaals

-- 
  Charles McCathieNevile, Opera Software: Standards Group
  hablo español  -  je parle français  -  jeg lærer norsk
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Received on Sunday, 13 May 2007 14:48:31 UTC