Re: [webcomponents] Closed flag proposal breaks ability to audit and automate tests of web pages (#354)

As a chair (i.e. from a position of assumed ignorance), I have been trying to follow the discussion into its deepest ratholes and out again. A few thoughts:

If there clearly isn't Consensus, the chairs probably aren't going to call for it - unless we believe there is a single outlier and we should be moving on, and want to confirm that. So while Anne is right that "formal objection" is the process term, we're aiming not to need the formal process, by reaching a broadly held understanding.

It seems to me that this is indeed a relatively contentious issue - even following the links, I see more or less endlessly continued arguments. I've also sat through some of those in face to face meetings, which are sadly imperfectly minuted (trust me, I did a bunch of that imperfect minuting myself).

It also seems to me that a lot of the contention revolves around pretty fundamental lack of shared understanding. While the question of "open or closed by default" seems unlikely to get unanimity, it seems we really have "somewhat open, somewhat closed, and really very closed" on the table, but many arguments are constructed assuming only 2 of those and different pairs in different cases.

I'm going to do some more archæology, and I hope that people can continue to work towards a shared understanding and a consensus based on goodwill and something that is technically sound. But it seems there is a *prima facie* case for reopening this issue - which is not to say that it would then be resolved differently - hence my wariness about reopening it "summarily".

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