Re: Locus of API discussion

On Jul 19, 2013, at 9:54 AM, cowwoc <cowwoc@bbs.darktech.org> wrote:

> On 19/07/2013 10:24 AM, Cullen Jennings wrote:
>> On Jul 9, 2013, at 2:44 PM, cowwoc <cowwoc@bbs.darktech.org> wrote:
>> 
>>>    Three weeks ago I posted a summary of discussion points that came up in the WebRTC World conference (most of which had to do with the WebRTC API). To date, I have not received a reply from any of the people you have listed. I am unable to gather the necessary momentum to turn these points into action items without your help. I was/am frustrated that the spec editors and vendors are responsible to engage the community on these matters, but did not. I hope this clarifies what I meant.
>> Many of us have been very busy updating drafts for ietf deadline so it as been a hard time to respond.
> Hi Cullen,
> 
>    Welcome back :)
> 
>    That's understandable but next time might I suggest you reply immediately with: "You bring up good points but I am busy updating drafts for the ietf deadline. I'll reply as soon as I get this done…"

So when I got down to tracking this down, it turns out I had read your email long ago. The was just nothing to say to it. 

> At least then there is an acknowledgement that my points are being taken into consideration and an expectation that a response will arrive in the near future. The current process is very broken. We have a lot of discussions on the mailing list without any concrete action items.

Yep, you will note that at our meetings, when we have decisions, we take action items. I encourage you to participate in theses. 

> When a discussion thread goes unanswered, there is no follow-up. On the one hand, most organizations don't conduct such long discussions over a bug tracker but on the other hand a bug tracker provides the assurance that an issue will remain open until it is resolved to everyone's mutual satisfaction. Issues don't close silently as happens on mailing lists. We need to find a way to fix our process.

Feel free to propose a process change to the IETF or W3C. However in the meantime the process is what it is. It's hard to change process at standard organizations and contrary to your claim that most organization don't do this, actually most inter nation standards organization do have a process a lot like the IETF and W3C for mailing list discussions. 

> 
>    Another thing I don't understand: As far as I know, the Working Group consists of http://www.w3.org/2000/09/dbwg/details?group=47318&public=1&order=org. That's around 78 people, yet none of them followed up on this. Where is the list of Working Group members that have an obligation to follow-up on these kind of posts?

absolutely none of them


> Meaning, who could I reasonably expect to reply?

You can't. But you can't read too much into no reply. It might be folks agreed with you and had no need to comment. It might be they thought the topic was already resolve so need to reply. It may be they stopped reading all your emails because the ration of signal to noise was to low. 

Keep in mind the chairs, editors, and most the other people on this list are volunteers and like open douce projects, vow with their feed on what is important and spend times on the discussions they find relevant. 

If you are a WG member you can expect comments to certain types of formal comments provided as the document gets close to done. 



> 
> Thanks,
> Gili
>

Received on Wednesday, 24 July 2013 04:54:24 UTC