HI Shawn,
Thanks for your reply.
On May 30, 2008, at 4:39 PM, Shawn Medero wrote:
On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 3:34 AM, Robert J Burns <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
I understand that issues places a burden on the WG. I wish the
process went
smoother so that edits to the draft occurred in some correspondence
to the
deliberations of the WG. Until that happens, I can't see another
way to
handle this then through the issue-tracker system.
Would you mind demonstrating an instance where the WG and issue
tracker were not in-sync? We should keep in mind that the issue
tracker is not a line-by-line "bug" tracker for the specification. It
is meant to track WG progress (often represented as ACTIONs) on broad
concepts concerning the specification. For instance we an issue to
help track the progress and discussion around @alt. In this cases
there is groundswell of WG discussion about a concept and the issue
tracker will help track how we our decision came to be.
The sentiment I tried to convey in this message is that I thought the
deliberations of the WG that are NOT in the issue tracker were not
going well, and I felt the issue tracker was necessary to move these
issues along. I never meant to suggest that the issue-tracker was not
working.
Having said all of that, although I usually cannot attend the
teleconferences, I want to let you know (as also conveyed to
Gregory,
Laura and Joshue who often can attend teleconferences) that I am
available
to work on these issues: i.e., drafting spec language, coordinating
research
needs and facilitating discussion. I hope you understand too, that
a great
amount of work — by me and many other WG members — already has gone
into
discussing these topics and congealing them into actionable items
from all
of these lengthy prior discussions.
Either you or I have fundamentally misunderstood how issues are
developed in the WG... I'll leave such guidance to our Chairs.
There's not a ground swell of discussion about ["UA norm for redirects
(both META and http)"][1]. I'm not just saying this from memory... if
I do [a really simple search for "redirect" across public-html][2] I'd
don't see any discussion about your exact issue until you raised it.
That you took the time to document a potential issue and start a
thread about it is good... that you presumed "it will be added to the
issue-tracker in time" is inappropriate.
I never claimed there was any groundswell. However, I took a 6 month
hiatus from participating in this WG and all of the issues I've raised
now were on the table back then (most in the issue tracker). They were
not issues that I brought to the WG, but rather issues that I took the
time to understand and digest and in many cases add to the old issue
tracking system (the Wiki which is all we had when I took my break
from the WG): distilling these issues from deliberations of the WG.
I would say that we do have a very different view about what is
happening in this WG. I see very little collaborative work going on
and an editor who shows complete contempt for W3C process and the
opinions of most anyone who speaks up. The general tenor of the WG
ends up chasing members away except for those who come first through
the WhatWG. I personally responded to an invitation from the WhatWG to
join in this WG, but since I hadn't been active in the WhatWG before I
(like many others) was branded as a non-WhatWG member and therefore my
contributions and opinions could be safely ignored at best and
ridiculed at worst.
Here's an example from one that was made into an ISSUE: To say a great
amount of discussion went into [ISSUE-43][3] (Client-Side Image Maps)
is a very strong misrepresentation. There's almost no discussion of
them in the public-html records or on IRC. The [wiki page][4] cited in
this issue contains edits entirely from one author.
Well it’s easy to belittle the work of other WG members, but I know
that I put a tremendous amount of time into deliberating and
understanding the opinions of others as well as identifying the
interoperability problems and under-specification of HTML image maps.
Please don't misunderstand me Robert - you have every right to start a
discussion and craft the discussion into an issue. No one is going to
discourage you from investing your energy into fostering healthy
discussions. If anyone does so you should ignore them and continue
building support, compiling use cases, finding research, and
documenting your efforts.
The problem (from my POV) with prematurely opening issues is that they
haven't been vetted ... and now it is left to a handful of issue
tracking volunteers, the editors, and the Chairs to sort this mess
out.
Again, calling it a mess simply belittles the hard work of mine and
other members who contributed to these discussions. Every single one
of these issues originated from my participation in the WG over 6
months ago. Most of them have been in the issue tracking system (the
wiki) since those days. On the issue of image maps, I don't know how
many emails were generated or IRC lines logged (in terms of shear
number), but I do know that tracking, researching and deliberating the
issue occupied a good chunk of my life (I'm sorry I can't give you a
scaler value measure of that). My recent work has been to clean up
those pages, to focus the issues and to add a few times that I didn't
get around to adding 6 months ago.
I too am a volunteer and I find it quite offensive to call the
contributions and time I've spent on this WG — in concert with others
— "a mess". As I've told Dan and several of my colleagues on the WG
(those who are able to regularly attend the teleconferences) that I am
ready and willing to put the time in to flesh out these: to facilitate
dialog, to spearhead research into the current UA behavior, and even
draft sections for HTML5. It is not at all that I want to do this nor
that I care all that deeply about any one of these issues. However, I
do care that an invitation was made for public participation in this
WG and no one genuinely cared to facilitate nor even allow such public
participation. Rather it seems this invitation was merely a publicity
stunt to be able to make a claim of unprecedented public participation.
I would really like to see you and others in this WG show a little
more respect to your colleagues on the WG — most of whom are also
volunteering their valuable time.
Take care,
Rob
