Re: Working Group Decision on ISSUE-131 caret-location-api

On Apr 11, 2011, at 5:06 PM, Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:

>> 
> 
> I'm confused about this decision from a process perspective.  This
> decision adopts something that wasn't expressed in any of the Change
> Proposals - it's one of the CPs, minus some exceptions.
> 
> In other Decisions, though, similar attempts to provide improved
> suggestions in the comments (somebody objects to a CP as written, but
> wouldn't object if certain changes were made) have been rejected with
> the reason that the decision is purposely limited to choosing between
> the submitted change proposals.
> 
> What's the criteria for the decision being limited only to submitted
> CPs versus allowing some leeway in synthesizing a decision different
> from any of the submitted Cps?

In exceptional circumstances, the chairs will "mix and match" between Change Proposals. Specifically, what we look for is logically independent differences between Change Proposals, where there are strong objections on either side to different pieces. In such cases, we limit ourselves to "this piece from this Change Proposal, this piece from this other one", essentially.

What we will not do is enter a ruling that calls for something not expressed in *any* Change Proposal. Thus, if one Change Proposal calls for painting the barn red, and another calls for leaving it yellow, we will ignore objections that say, "you should really paint the barn blue", if no Change Proposal called for that. In such cases, the WG has not had a fair chance to review the change proposed.

There may be borderline cases, but I hope the difference is clear in general.

Even when it comes to split decisions, we try to restrict those to exceptional circumstances. In this case, the main exceptional circumstances were that one of the changes called for, on further examination, was not specified in sufficient detail to apply unambiguously.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Tuesday, 12 April 2011 01:11:24 UTC