Re: ISSUE-127: link-type-flags - Straw Poll for Objections

On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 11:53 AM, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de> wrote:
> This issue is not purely "aesthetic". It affects registrations of new link
> relations.

You did not explain this anywhere in your Change Proposal, as far as I can tell.

> The format of the registry currently *allows* them to vary.

You don't explain why this is a problem.  Is it because you think it
increases the probability that new link relations will actually vary
in this regard?  If so, why do you think this?  Or is it some other
reason?  You don't say.

> I don't understand this point. The current format allows the relation to
> have a different effect on the various elements; the new format does not.

Nothing in the Change Proposal prevents the editor from, e.g., adding
additional prose later on to specifically let a link relation's
meaning vary, while preserving the format mandated by your Change
Proposal.  Possibly this could be construed as contradictory to your
Change Proposal's intent, but you don't explain your reasoning
sufficiently in the Change Proposal to make me confident in any such
judgment.

> The context is here:
> <http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/link-relations/current/msg00000.html>
> plus the subsequent mails.

You did not provide this context in the Change Proposal.  I don't
think it's reasonable to ask everyone in the Working Group to read
through whole e-mail threads you link to -- you should summarize the
arguments concisely in the Change Proposal itself.  This is especially
true when those threads are only linked from another e-mail which is
only linked to from an objection.

> It appears you do not understand the underlying reason for this change
> proposal; this could be my fault for not explaining well enough, but it
> could also be caused by you not caring about things outside the HTML world.

It's because you didn't explain it anywhere in the Change Proposal.
My understanding is that Change Proposals are meant to be entirely
self-contained: they must explain their reasoning in full without
assuming more than basic background knowledge on the part of the
reader.  I believe I have sufficient knowledge of web technologies
that if the Change Proposal depends on some context or other facts
that I don't know, it needs to state them explicitly.  If it doesn't,
I'm left with objecting only to the Change Proposal that I see.

My understanding is also that in judging the issue, the chairs look
only at Change Proposals and objections, not public-html e-mails or
other context.  Thus when writing my objection, I only looked at the
Change Proposals and objections, and didn't try to look for any
outside info.  If the chairs are considering only what's written in
the Change Proposal, I think what I wrote stands: it doesn't justify
itself at all, and should be rejected.  If the chairs are considering
additional material not presented to participants in the Working Group
survey, I think that's a problem and needs to be fixed -- it denies
Working Group members the ability to raise informed objections based
on the information presented to them.


Chairs, is it correct that Working Group Decisions are based only on
the Change Proposals and objections presented?  Specifically, do the
chairs consider things like e-mails on public-html or link-relations
that were not mentioned in any Change Proposal or objection?  How
about entire e-mail threads that are indirectly linked from objections
with no explanation of their significance in the objection itself,
like <http://www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/link-relations/current/msg00010.html>
(which is linked to from
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2011Mar/0139.html>
which is linked to from Julian's objection to the zero-edit proposal)?
 I'm under the impression that the Change Proposal is required to
contain a full rationale in compact form, to permit Working Group
members to easily understand the proposal *without* having to track
through e-mail archives and similar.  If Change Proposals can be
accepted based on arguments that are scattered throughout many e-mails
that don't directly deal with the issue at hand, it makes it much
harder for Working Group members to give informed responses in the
survey.

Received on Friday, 11 March 2011 22:09:49 UTC