Lachlan Hunt wrote:
Moving process discussion to www-archive
Sam Ruby wrote:
You don't have to back up your opinion if you "can live with" something.
No, people should need to give justifications whether they are for or
against a proposal. If people don't provide any justification for why
some proposal is good, then there's less information available to base a
decision on. The process must not degrade to a simple voting process,
which is how I perceive the can/can't live with model. It doesn't
matter how many people can or can't live with anything. It's the
quality of the arguments that matter, not the quantity of those arguing
one way or another.
e.g. Consider this scenario:
* Dozens of people are saying they can live with proposal A, but not B.
* 1 or 2 people are saying they strongly prefer proposal B, but they
"can live with" proposal A.
* The many people in favour of A are using relatively weak arguments.
* The few in favour of B are using relatively strong arguments.
Ideally, the result should favour the few over the many: proposal B
should be chosen over A.
In this scenario, nobody said that they "can't live with" proposal B.
If someone did, they would have been asked to provide a strong argument
as to why they did so.
However, as I understand your consensus driven can/can't live with
model, proposal A would be chosen over B, despite it being suboptimal.
The other model may not be considered consensus, and I suspect you think
that's a problem, but it is a technically superior solution and that is
why I think your model is flawed.
In the scenario above, as no-one would be able to provide a strong
argument against either option, both A and B would be made available as
options to the editor.
I know from experience how consensus driven can/can't-live-with
approaches can result in suboptimal outcomes. Just look at the
Selectors API method naming issue. Despite the research and effort I
put into finding the most appropriate name based on evidence and logical
argumentation, the WG went to a vote and forced me to choose a
suboptimal name that no-one was particularly thrilled about but which
everyone "can live with".
Who is suggesting a vote?
- Sam Ruby
P.S. I hate with a passion hypothetical discussions such as these. The
discussion that has occurred recently on issue 54 doctype-legacy-compat
is not an example of a vote. No noses were counted. Only two people
followed instructions. Those two people provided strong cases. Those
strong arguments made by few made a big difference.
Tell me what you don't like about doctype-legacy-compat, and I will see
what I can do to fix real instances of real problems.
If your position is that while this may have worked on
doctype-legacy-compat, it is unlikely to do so on bigger problems, let's
revisit that discussion when we have real instances of real problems.
