Re: Why Consensus? ...and how to raise issues

> important to keep coordinated on what everyone is doing. It is also
> helpful to attend because whether or not the group thought something
> was a good idea or not often doesn't come through well in meeting
> minutes.

Then fix your damned minutes. How hard can it be to write these things
down?

Is it not irresponsible for the Working Group to fail to document its
decisions and rationales?


> Even if you cannot go to the meetings, read the drafts and comment on
> them regularly. Send emails to the w3c-wai-gl and/or
> [17]public-comments-wcag20@w3.org lists, pointing out the draft you're
> commenting on, the problem you have with it, and if at all possible,
> potential solutions.

That requirement is too onerous. It's certainly very nice to say that
critics must solve the problems they identify, but that is arguably what
W3C staff, PiGS, and politburo members with day jobs should be doing. Half
the time the issue involves a failure to read the W3C's own specs, or a
failure to simply provide examples from the real Web to back up what
they're saying.

If PiGS member A makes a statement, and some non-PiGS contributor X says
it's false and explains why, it is A's responsibility to fix it. It is
certainly nice if X or someone else solves it, but in a group as
notoriously incapable of spotting its own mistakes as this, merely
pointing them out must suffice.

Further, the converse of "participant in good standing" is not
"participant in bad standing." That requires a formal banning or shunning
and applies solely to former participants in good standing. The converse
of "participant in good standing" is a participant with no standing at
all. The values, essentially, are +1, 0, and -1, not +1 and -1.

<http://www.w3.org/2003/06/Process-20030618/groups.html#good-standing>

--

  Joe Clark  |  joeclark@joeclark.org
  Author, _Building Accessible Websites_
  <http://joeclark.org/access/> | <http://joeclark.org/book/>

Received on Thursday, 18 December 2003 18:44:14 UTC