On Thu, 12 Dec 2013 19:49:30 +0400, Anne van Kesteren <[email protected]>
wrote:
On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 7:35 PM, Charles McCathie Nevile
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Tue, 10 Dec 2013 17:21:20 +0100, Anne van Kesteren <[email protected]>
wrote:
Since when did we start putting the onus on the reviewer that her or
his feedback is captured?
Before I started working with W3C in the mid 90's (although as noted
below it is part of a set of checks and balances).
Given the scarcity of quality review that seems bad.
I think what's bad is that it is difficult to get quality review, good
editors, and excellent contributions from the working group. But I don't
see an obvious fix for that. Indeed, the point of soliciting review is
because it seems unlikely that even the best set of contributors working
together will always be right.
Indeed. And we expect the editor to do that to the best of their
ability. In the past, where editors were actually editing a document
that was produced more directly by the whole Working Group, the group
itself also assumed some of that function.
But editors are not infallible, and the new model Working Group tends
to be less hands-on about directing the editor. I believe largely at
the perceived behest of a handful of high-profile editors such as
yourself.
So in practice the necessity for a commenter to check that their
comment was understood correctly and correctly acted on has become a
little more prominent in the overall balance of how things are done.
Sad to learn this is how WebApps tries to run things. Both as editor
and reviewer I find this unacceptable.
I think we're misunderstanding each other. This isn't how Webapps tries to
run things, nor any kind of formal policy. It is a reflection on the
imperfect world we live in.
It's unclear what you think we should be doing differently.
If you believe we can simply insist that editors do a perfect job of
capturing feedback and responding to it correctly, we will have to
disagree.
If you think that reviewers should expect the editor and the Working Group
to make a serious good faith effort to understand and respond correctly to
a review comment we are in violent agreement.
As an editor and a chair, I find it unfortunate when a reviewer doesn't
follow up their comment to ensure that it was clear and that the Working
Group acted on it in a satisfactory way, because while I would like to
trust that this is the case I am more confident after checking. But given
the absence of an enforcement mechanism, that's just another of the
unfortunate things that happens (and in general I would prefer that than a
too-strict enforcement mechanism).
cheers
Chaals
--
Charles McCathie Nevile - Consultant (web standards) CTO Office, Yandex
[email protected] Find more at http://yandex.com
