- From: Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky@MIT.EDU>
- Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2011 10:48:33 -0500
On 11/21/11 10:38 AM, Anne van Kesteren wrote: > On Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:16:22 +0100, Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky at mit.edu> wrote: >> As long as all technical discussion ends up in a central place where >> everyone can see it at some point, no harm done. >> >> My experience is that once you have side channels for technical >> discussion, that doesn't happen anymore. Plenty of stuff gets >> discussed on irc and makes it into the spec without any mention on >> this mailing list, for example. >> >> The net result is that it becomes easy for small echo-chamber groups >> to push through changes to the spec that are bad (whether on purpose >> or not) that everyone else is supposed to notice "somehow" and go >> about fixing. > > You neglect to mention that those changes can also be good I was specifically addressing the issue of what harm can be done. Obviously, good changes can come from any source, including benevolent dictators and random-number generators. ;) > and what the trade off is between the two. Sure. Again, I was pointing out that there _is_ a tradeoff here, not just an unmitigated good. > In case a change is made people disagree with it does not take a long > time for it to either be reverted or changed to something that > accommodates even more people. That is my experience thus far anyway. If > your impression is different it would be good to know what we can do to > improve the situation. My "impression" is that following all changes to the specification via the revision control system is a pretty large burden, if nothing else because there is no obvious way to do it linked from anywhere I can find. Maybe a small set of people "in the know" who got a link from someone on IRC are following it, but plenty of people who are trying to implement the specification seem to not be on that select list. -Boris
Received on Monday, 21 November 2011 07:48:33 UTC