- From: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
- Date: Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:20:30 -0800
- To: Laura Carlson <laura.lee.carlson@gmail.com>
- Cc: Shelley Powers <shelley.just@gmail.com>, Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net>, Anne van Kesteren <annevk@opera.com>, HTMLWG WG <public-html@w3.org>, Paul Cotton <Paul.Cotton@microsoft.com>
On Nov 8, 2009, at 11:25 AM, Laura Carlson wrote: > Hi Shelley, > >> I think I missed the supportive IRC comments. Too bad, I would have >> liked to see these. > > Sorry, that was a typo. It should have read unsupportive IRC comments. I don't know if anyone else made explicitly unsupportive comments on IRC. But I'll note that my face-to-face comments (which were minuted on IRC and cited earlier) were not meant to be unsupportive, but rather purely fact-based. The IRC minutes do not fully reflect a number of things: A) The degree of confusion over who sent what comments and what standing they had. There was a MathML WG member present and he expected HTML WG members present to be able to explain and defend the comments. Specifically the point of discussion was xlink:href vs. href attributes. B) The fact that, after continuing confusion over the standing of the comments, everyone turned to me as the only co-chair in the room and asked me to explain what was going on. During the prior discussion, I'd searched the list archives and found that there were comments circulated for discussion Wednesday afternoon, and officially submitted Friday morning (with the MathML session occurring Friday afternoon); I also did not see a call for consensus. So I reported the facts as I saw them. C) That I said any confusion was the fault of the chairs, for not giving a well-defined procedure for submitting collected comments. D) That I clearly said Shelley duly volunteered to gather feedback. If anyone is still concerned with what was minuted, I ask you to please check with someone who was present in the room at the time, instead of reading ill intent into the somewhat fragmentary minutes. My conclusions after this experience are: 1) Having volunteers designated to collect comments for cross-WG review is extremely valuable - we would not have given as much review on MathML 3.0 if there hadn't been a specific person driving it. 2) To avoid confusion, it's probably best to explicitly mark such comments as being from individuals and collected by the WG, but not necessarily representing WG consensus, as suggested by Sam. The Chairs fell down on the job in not providing the right guidance up front. 3) It's also possible to have a call for consensus on cross-WG comments. But I agree with Sam that it's more considerate to send collected comments from individuals, because then the receiving WG knows who to talk to if they disagree. Indeed, I'd suggest that future cross-WG comments should name the individuals who provided them. 4) If you see something in the minutes that you're unhappy with, it may be a good idea to directly ask the speaker or someone who was present in person to explain. The minutes do not record every word that was spoken and often lack context. Regards, Maciej
Received on Monday, 9 November 2009 02:21:04 UTC