Re: advice on appropriate responses to comments

On 10/04/2013 02:29 AM, Pat Hayes wrote:
> I need advice on WG protocol.
>
> What should I do when (as with David Booth, recently), a response to a LC comment is immediately rejected in a debating style? Should I as a WG member refrain from taking part in the invited debate, or should I respond to it point by point, or what? Should I distinguish my personal responses from offiical WG responses?

[First, some general advice/observations (not specific to this thread, 
ISSUE-149)]

It depends on several factors.   In general, our options are, in 
descending order of desirability:

1.  Realize the commenter has a valid point and change the documents to 
reflect this.

2.  Convince the commenter that the document is okay as it is.

3.  Make a polite and respectful formal response that's likely to 
convince everyone ELSE reading it, now and in the years to come, that 
the documents are best as is.   Tell the commenter they may chose to 
register a formal objection if they want this decision reviewed by the 
Director and brought to the attention of the W3C Advisory Committee 
during their final review.    Hopefully at this point the commenter 
realizes they're in a Solomon and the Baby situation and will only 
formally object if they think the world would be better if the spec died.

You should definitely distinguish your personal responses from official 
WG responses.   If you think 1 or 2 might still be possible (in the few 
days remaining), then it makes some sense to continue discussion.

Also, debating is probably not the right way to think about this at all, 
since in this process you get a lot more points for realizing the other 
guy is right (option 1 above) than for convincing the audience he's 
wrong (option 3 above).

[Now, on to ISSUE-149]

You and I have been in discussions of this topic since before the last 
ice age.    I believe httpRange-14 is another head on the same beast.    
Much as I'd love to see this thing slain (I'm desperately resisting the 
urge to jump into the fray), maybe this is yet another time to run and 
hide.   I don't know that we should change the text just because of 
David, but thinking how much it's bothering him, maybe there are other 
people who will be similarly inflamed and we can somehow sidestep all of 
them with a combination of being bland and stating that some matters are 
out of scope here.

     -- Sandro


> Advice? Off-list if preferred.
>
> Pat
>
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Received on Friday, 4 October 2013 13:43:11 UTC