[Bug 5289] "##defined" in wildcards

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=5289





------- Comment #3 from cmsmcq@w3.org  2007-12-07 19:24 -------
Comment #2 seems to suffer from a certain confusion over levels and 
responsibilities.

One may or may not read the XSDL spec as talking implicitly about operations
like adding elements to schemas.  As a factual matter, the spec does talk
about operations on schemas, such as composition, which can be regarded as
entailing the addition of elements.  (It's true that the spec does not address
the topic directly. Some readers believe that the very special degree of
clarity
and utility achieved by XSDL's discussion of schema composition may result in 
part from that silence; if they are right, then we should be very careful to do 
the right thing when considering changes.)

But it is one thing to claim that the spec talks or does not talk about some 
topic T.  It is quite a different one to claim that because the spec does
not talk about T, the Working Group should not think about, or discuss, T.
It not only does not follow in general, but the argument is irrelevant and
serves only to distract the WG from what ought to be our concern with the
usability of our language.

Comment #1 claims that the bug report constitutes scope creep.  Not so.
Whether "##defined" is always useful, sometimes useful, or never useful,
and its good and bad features, are necessarily in scope for discussion as 
soon as ##defined is proposed.  Comment #1 claims that the particular 
argument offered is out of scope; this claim seems to be contradicted by
the Working Group's classification of bug 2826 as in scope.  (Bug 2826
is RQ-135 Consistency and validity for a set of schema components.)

In my role as staff contact, I have to observe that as a process matter the
Working Group is obligated to make a good-faith effort to resolve Last Call
comments; as I understand "good faith", this obligation means the Working
Group cannot legitimately respond to any Last Call comment by declining to
consider it on the grounds that we have already closed the question it relates
to.  When the comment relates to a question on which the Working Group 
actively solicited feedback, the process requirements do not change, but 
it is even clearer that attempts to shut down arguments without engaging them
constitute bad faith.

So in my role as process cop for the Working Group I have to suggest to Noah
that his attempt to suppress the argument raised in this issue is itself out
of order.  If the Working Group has consensus on an analysis which weights
the argument lightly, then it will not take much time to reassert that
consensus, explain why the Working Group is not moved by the argument, and
offer the appropriate counter-arguments.  If the Working Group does not have
such consensus, then a consensus may form around a new understanding of
the problem.  Attempts to characterize last-call comments as "reopening"
closed issues are intrinsically suspect, because they appear to be motivated
by a desire to avoid putting the alleged consensus of the Working Group to 
any test.   What reason might one have for avoiding such a test, if not
the suspicion that the alleged consensus will not hold up in an open 
discussion?

Received on Friday, 7 December 2007 19:24:53 UTC