Re: FW: [Bug 7034] New: change "conformance checker" to "ideology checker" or "loyalty checker"

Hi Larry,

> @2009-06-18 06:56 -0700:
> Well, the humor in the "issues" list lost the context... 

Yeah, I can realize that now. It was a mistake for me to assume
anybody coming across it would automatically understand the context.

> Since I'm trying to catch up on 3000 emails about what's happened
> in HTML land, a "bug" in the bug data base to change
> "conformance checker" to "ideology checker" -- well, there's
> no indication in the bug itself about what the real issue is,
> why it's in the issue list, what the substantive issue might
> be, etc.

Yep, understood.

> Part of the procedural anomaly of the HTML working group is
> that tracking what's happening is more than a full-time job.

Amen to that. I also personally find it very difficult to keep up
with the amount of messages coming in from various places -- the
mailing list being the biggest source, but the bug tracker too (I
receive (and actually read) every comment that gets added for
every HTMLWG bug that there), the diffs that get generated for
changes to any drafts we have on dev.w3.org.

> To the extent that the issues list and the bug database
> don't make sense without reference to an ongoing discussion,
> it's confusing.

Yeah, I can see that it certainly is in this case. I guess what I
will try to do to help mitigate that is be more careful about
putting more context details into any issues that get added to the
bug database, and to encourage others to do the same.

> I'm frustrated at the impossibility of catching up after even a
> brief absence.

I think many of use share that same frustration. I genuinely dread
getting back to my inbox after being away. One thing I've
personally done to try to keep up with discussions is to have all
a copy of all public-html messages forwarded to my mobile so that
I can read them in real time as they come in, while I'm commuting
or otherwise idle and offline. But I can understand that for many
others that would be more of a the-cure-is-worse-than-the-disease.

A general solution would be to try to get the overall traffic on
the list down. Various of us over the last two years have tried to
do that some, with some intermittent success, but there are still
often times where the volume of traffic on the list is just plain
excessive by almost any measure.

> And no, I'm not trying to be patronizing; sorry if it seemed
> that way. 

I'm sorry for having initiated the confusion. Going forward, I'll
try harder to remember that the context in which others in the
group are seeing the flow of information (using the term
"information" very loosely) is necessarily in any way closely
similar to the context in which I'm seeing it.

  --Mike

-- 
Michael(tm) Smith
http://people.w3.org/mike/

Received on Thursday, 18 June 2009 14:31:19 UTC