Re: Request to Revert revision 1.4525

On Oct 28, 2010, at 12:10 AM, Ian Hickson wrote:

> On Wed, 27 Oct 2010, Sam Ruby wrote:
>> 
>> Ian, the chairs have determined that the following change is likely to 
>> reduce rather than increase consensus, and therefore per our 
>> agreement[1] are requesting a speedy revert of the following change 
>> pending resolution of the "publishing problem":
>> 
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-commits/2010Oct/0332.html
> 
> Holy overreaction, batman. I'm just having some publication issues and 
> didn't want people to be referencing an obsolete editor's draft in the 
> meantime. It'll be fixed when it's fixed. I really don't think it's a good 
> idea to have people referencing an obsolete draft in the meantime, though, 
> especially since there's a perfectly adequate alternative available that 
> I can point people to, so I've left it as-is for now

What are the publication issues that prevent updating the Editor's Draft? Perhaps the Chairs or Team Contacts can help if there are technical difficulties.

> 
>> And furthermore, we are asking that if you have a list of issues that 
>> you feel need to be resolved, you enumerate them either on this list or 
>> as bug reports.
> 
> Well since we're on the topic of obsolescence, I think we should have a 
> warning on the TR/ page that this draft is perennially obsolete as well. 
> It's causing lots of problems with people referencing old (and 
> known-wrong, since-fixed) text [1]. I'd added such a warning to the draft 
> before we last published but for some reason you removed it.

We previously discussed this privately, and the Chairs asked for the warning to be proposed on the mailing list before publishing a draft including it, to make sure it wouldn't be a source of drama or controversy, and that everyone agrees on the specific text. It's true that there are often other changes to the status section which we don't feel merit this level of review; however, we think it's part of our job to exercise our judgment to limit drama, and in this case it seemed wise to have a bit of discussion first.

Anyway, now that it has been brought up - what do you think of the warning box in the recently published Navigation Timing Working Draft:
<http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/WD-navigation-timing-20101026/>?

How would others in the WG feel about a similar warning box in the status section of HTML WG drafts?

With chair hat off, I'll give my personal view - I think it would be beneficial, and I think the particular wording there is reasonable. In particular, I have seen myself some cases where there was miscommunication due to one person looking at a Working Draft and another at an Editor's Draft, and not realizing right away that there have been changes. I think it would be good to fix that, and it is reasonable and within W3C precedent.

I would also personally support a quick-turn publication round to add warning boxes along these lines to our published Working Drafts.

Would be glad to hear other views as well.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Thursday, 28 October 2010 07:28:41 UTC