Re: What's the purpose of these meaningless issue resolution messages?

We are trying...  For the record, new issues are being left in what we 
call the "incoming bucket" until the backlog of responses is fully 
cleared, so we don't end up with the same problem in the future.  This 
may mean there is a delay before we start responding to new issues.  
Please bear with us.

As to the brief responses to old issues, what I am trying to do is let 
each submitter know the status of their original issue using some 
boilerplate, and then append to that how the issue was addressed or why 
it was rejected.  These responses are necessarily short because 1) the 
issues are mostly very very old, and 2) the issues were mostly resolved 
by simply implementing the suggestion.  When an issue was "rejected", I 
have tried to include a summary of why by looking at the reviewers 
notes.  However, I am not usually requesting further input from the 
submitter.  The issues were disposed of so long ago that the document 
has likely changed dramatically underneath. I hope that by reminding 
people of issues they have submitted, even if they were submitted long 
ago, people will at least check that part of the working draft and see 
if it might now be more to their liking.  I have just now changed the 
boiler plate about rejected issues to mention this:

    Thanks for your comment.  We addressed it quite a while ago, but
    neglected to send you a formal reply.  While we value your input, at
    this time we are not able to agree with your request.  However,
    since the working draft has changed substantially in the interval
    between your submitting the issue and our sending this response, it
    may have evolved into something you find acceptable.  Please check
    it at http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2.  If you still have concerns,
    please submit a new comment so that it can be processed in the
    context of the current draft.

I appreciate that it might appear that your issues have gotten little 
attention from the working group.  Let me again assure you that is not 
the case.  The working group looked at these issues ages ago, and in 
many cases the submitter was responded to at the time.  Unfortunately, 
these responses were for the most part not recorded in the tracking 
system.  I am just trying to make certain that each issue in the system 
has a "tracked" response.  I could likely have hunted the public and 
working group archives to find related responses and just resent those.  
However, that seemed like overkill considering the number of issues and 
the time available.  In hind-sight, not the smartest thing I have ever done.

Laurens Holst wrote:

>
> Jim Ley schreef:
>
>> Nope, the same resolution of a very old issue triggered the same 
>> complaint about how it was addressed, my problem was how it was 
>> addressed, the fact it took so long was a seperate concern, the main 
>> concern was like Ernest Cline and Bjoern Hoerhmann, that the issues 
>> are not being formally addressed, there is nothing but a boiler plate 
>> response.
>>
>> To be fair, it's an improvement, at least some of the HTML Working 
>> Group are finally embarrassed about their being all these open 
>> unresponsded to issues, the problem is though,that all it's really 
>> done is now given a focus for the complaints.   I do now feel it's 
>> worthwhile opening new issues, which I previously didn't, so progress 
>> is definately being made.
>
>
> There must be a huge backlog, so I can imagine it being somewhat 
> problematic to fix all the mistakes from the past years with a proper 
> response in two or three days :).
>
> Anyways, I’m glad it is now an issue which is being taken care of.

Thanks.

-- 
Shane P. McCarron                          Phone: +1 763 786-8160 x120
Managing Director                            Fax: +1 763 786-8180
ApTest Minnesota                            Inet: shane@aptest.com

Received on Tuesday, 31 May 2005 14:47:15 UTC