Re: splits, discussions, and manic behavior

Hi Shelley,

> To return to the W3C work, the suggestion has been made in a couple of
> emails that we begun discussions about major changes on the email
> list. The suggestion sounds reasonable, but there are two problems
> with this approach.

At one time Shawn was going write a weekly review all the Bugzilla
traffic for the previous week and post it to this list.
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Jun/0217.html

> Our change procedure is based on items
> beginning as bugs and then going through the issue tracker if the
> editor disagrees.

Yes. From all I can gather you followed the formal procedure. Step 0.
Email is optional. But you CCd the group anyway.

> Regardless, none of this matters if we wake up one day and found one
> specification, suddenly, split into six, with little care to quality,
> or damage caused by the resulting split. Then when it's pointed out
> that such split is harmful, the result is reversed, and the bugs that
> are supposedly the "cause" of such aberrant actions, dismissed out of
> hand.

Bugs can't be dismissed out of hand as they can be escalated to issues.
http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html#escalation

> Yet, if these had been managed properly, formally, I bet we would find
> this group more in agreement or not--if arguments were allowed to be
> heard, if formal change proposals were allowed to be given, if the
> HTML5 author didn't act so abruptly, and unilaterally.

Arguments still should be allowed to be heard, Shelley. The decision
policy procedure is still in place.

> I forgot to add that the end result of all this manic activity this
> week is I believe the bugs I initially wanted to create as issues,
> were mostly rejected, after the rather interesting mechanizations this
> week. This does mean that I can now add these as issues, which I
> wanted to do in the first place.

I don't see why not. Sam, Maciej, Paul, this would be in accordance
with the procedure, would it not?

Best Regards,
Laura

-- 
Laura L. Carlson

Received on Saturday, 9 January 2010 19:52:50 UTC