[whatwg] WHATWG on Google+

[Boris Zbarsky]

On 11/21/11 10:38 AM, Anne van Kesteren wrote:
> 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

I was specifically addressing the issue of what harm can be done. 
Obviously, good changes can come from any source, including benevolent 
dictators and random-number generators.  ;)

> and what the trade off is between the two.

Sure.  Again, I was pointing out that there _is_ a tradeoff here, not 
just an unmitigated good.

> 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.

My "impression" is that following all changes to the specification via 
the revision control system is a pretty large burden, if nothing else 
because there is no obvious way to do it linked from anywhere I can 
find.  Maybe a small set of people "in the know" who got a link from 
someone on IRC are following it, but plenty of people who are trying to 
implement the specification seem to not be on that select list.

-Boris