- From: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
- Date: Mon, 30 Jul 2007 12:01:33 -0700
- To: Sam Ruby <rubys@us.ibm.com>
- Cc: Dan Connolly <connolly@w3.org>, John Foliot <foliot@wats.ca>, steve@w3.org, timbl@w3.org, jbrewer@w3.org, 'wai-ig list' <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>, wai-xtech@w3.org, public-html@w3.org, www-html@w3.org
On Jul 30, 2007, at 11:21 AM, Sam Ruby wrote: > > Dan Connolly wrote: >> On Thu, 2007-07-26 at 14:30 -0700, John Foliot wrote: >>> Mr. Bratt, Mr. Berners-Lee, Ms. Brewer, Mr. Connolly, >>> >>> I am writing today regarding an issue that both shocks and >>> profoundly >>> disappoints me. While I understand that to a large extent there >>> is little >>> that can be done at this point, I personally feel that the issue I >>> am >>> referring to should be brought directly to your attention, as it >>> indirectly >>> affects the reputation and public position of the W3C. >> [...] >> John, your complaint is acknowledged. >> Yes, accessibility is essential part of our charter... >> http://www.w3.org/2007/03/HTML-WG-charter.html#coordination >> ... but figuring out how to achieve it is hard work. >> Organizing the W3C HTML WG as primarily a large mailing list is >> somewhat risky; typically, W3C Working Groups establish mutual >> trust and respect in face-to-face meetings and teleconferences >> which results in more sensitivity than we are seeing in >> the HTML WG mailing list and nearby forums such as IRC. >> (The particular discussion you cite is in a WHATWG forum, >> not a W3C forum, but I think that matters only a little.) > > Other standards organizations cope, and do so by having policies for > dealing with situations such as these. For example: > > http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3683.html > http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc3934.html > http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc4633.html > > I submit that if the W3C is not willing to establish and enforce > similar policies that this noble experiment is openness may not > produce the results you seek. While it's good to have a process for removing people who are severely and consistently disruptive, I don't think the complaint that was raised rises to this level. The linked IRC log in the original complaint did not even seem especially rude to me, for IRC. For example, the log includes people discussing whether one way of embedding static images is better than another for accessibility reasons, and trying test cases on various screen readers. And in general I would not draw too many conclusions about people's attitudes from an out-of-context IRC log. Regards, Maciej
Received on Monday, 30 July 2007 19:01:45 UTC