XHTML 2 Issue handling

Dear HTML Working Group,

  Please report to the Director my formal objection to the way the
Working Group responds to comments. Formally addressing issues is
clearly defined in the W3C Process Document [1] and the Director's
expectations are further clarified in [2].

An example for such a response from the HTML WG is the response to
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html-editor/2003JulSep/0315

  "Thanks for your comment. While we value your input, at this
  time we are not able to agree with your request." -- [3]

Even though Shane McCarron also included some personal remarks, the re-
sponse doen't contain any information but that the issue got rejected.

Working Groups are required to formally address issues timely, the
response came about 21 months after I raised the issue. Responses
are expected to include rationale for decisions, the response does
not include any rationale. Responses are expected to be technically
sound, the response is not. Working Groups must be able to show
evidence of having attempted to satisfy reviewers, no such attempts
have been made.

Working Groups are expected to formally address issues on the same
forum as they were raised. I raised the issue on the www-html-editor
mailing list, the response however was sent only to the member-only
mailing list w3c-html-wg and myself. For other issues the Working
Group indicated that some changes have been made to the draft, but
fails to provide any detail on these changes. Such responses can't
be evaluated for technical soundness and thus fail to meet the re-
quirements of the Process document aswell.

The same basically applies to all responses I've received so far;
I do not think that these responses can be considered substantive
responses as defined in the Process document and thus consider my
issues not yet formally addressed.

  [1] http://www.w3.org/2004/02/Process-20040205/process#formal-address
  [2] http://www.w3.org/2004/02/02-transitions.html#formally-address
  [3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Member/w3c-html-wg/2005AprJun/0080
      (member-only)

Thanks,
-- 
Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de
Weinh. Str. 22 · Telefon: +49(0)621/4309674 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de
68309 Mannheim · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.websitedev.de/

Received on Wednesday, 25 May 2005 21:57:54 UTC