[whatwg] Correcting some misconceptions about Responsive Images

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On May 16, 2012, at 4:53 PM, Jonas Sicking <jonas at sicking.cc> wrote:

> On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 1:59 PM, Anne van Kesteren <annevk at annevk.nl> wrote:
>> I just wanted to correct one small thing here.
>> 
>> On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 10:51 PM, Jonas Sicking <jonas at sicking.cc> wrote:
>>> (The difference that the w3c lists were private is not really a
>>> meaningful difference if we're telling people to join CGs and do
>>> development there).
>> 
>> "We" have not done that, but unfortunately nobody called out the bad
>> suggestion either :-(
>> 
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg-archive/2012Feb/0194.html
> 
> I'm not sure what you think it's a bad suggestion? I would say that
> the CG was more successful in attracting author feedback than WhatWG
> currently is.

The downside of the CG as executed is that it was much less successful in attracting browser implementor feedback (in part because it was apparently not advertised in places frequented by browser standards people). So the implementor feedback only got applied later, and without full knowledge and understanding of the CGs efforts. It's not useful to have a standards process that doesn't include all the essential stakeholders.

The most important point though is that no one from the WHATWG recommended creating a CG. Saying that the existence of the CG obligates people to respond there is not really scalable, the logical conclusion would be that HTML standards discussion has to be spread among all future newly created groups that try to do anything HTML-related, even ones not advertised in the existing places. I don't see how that is a reasonable policy. It would be like if I made my own mozilla-feature-planning list and then got mad at Mozilla folks for not replying there when making release plans.

Regards,
Maciej