[whatwg] WHATWG on Google+

[Anne van Kesteren]

On Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:16:22 +0100, Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky at mit.edu> wrote:
> As long as all technical discussion ends up in a central place where  
> everyone can see it at some point, no harm done.
>
> My experience is that once you have side channels for technical  
> discussion, that doesn't happen anymore.  Plenty of stuff gets discussed  
> on irc and makes it into the spec without any mention on this mailing  
> list, for example.
>
> The net result is that it becomes easy for small echo-chamber groups to  
> push through changes to the spec that are bad (whether on purpose or  
> not) that everyone else is supposed to notice "somehow" and go about  
> fixing.

You neglect to mention that those changes can also be good and what the  
trade off is between the two. I think that most of the time though after  
some initial discussion people are encouraged to either start an email  
thread or file a bug, depending on the nature of the issue. This may not  
have happened in all cases, and in those cases a request for clarification  
can always be made on this mailing list. The changes to the specification  
are all publicly recorded and are actively followed by a number of  
different people.

In case a change is made people disagree with it does not take a long time  
for it to either be reverted or changed to something that accommodates  
even more people. That is my experience thus far anyway. If your  
impression is different it would be good to know what we can do to improve  
the situation.


-- 
Anne van Kesteren
http://annevankesteren.nl/