[whatwg] Correcting some misconceptions about Responsive Images

[Rafael Weinstein]

On Thu, May 17, 2012 at 11:12 AM, Matthew Wilcox <mail at matthewwilcox.com> wrote:
> On 17 May 2012 18:49, Rafael Weinstein <rafaelw at chromium.org> wrote:
>> It's easy to see how the experience you describe below would be
>> frustrating. FWIW, I routinely feel frustration at seemingly wasted
>> time.
>>
>> Unfortunately, it's inescapable that reaching consensus can be
>> exhausting, especially via email -- and doing so always requires
>> re-explaining the same thing multiple times in multiple ways. This is
>> true for everyone.
>
> Agreed, there will always be an element of this - although in the case
> of the CG this got to the point that we addressed it with a FAQ page.
> That helped us and people visiting. It didn't seem to help the WG, for
> whatever reason?
>
>> In fairness to Hixie -- being an editor is fairly thankless and he
>> does a remarkable job of keeping up even just with whatwg, webapps and
>> a few others (I gave up long ago). If you need someone to understand
>> something, it's best to directly bring it to their attention. The
>> internet is a big place =-).
>
> I can see both sides of this. When you're busy, you're busy, and Hixie
> is busy. On the other hand, this was a long drawn out multi-month
> problem that was talked about quite literally everywhere. It's the
> fact that the scope of awareness everywhere else was so large that
> makes it so surprising it was missed in the one group that it ought to
> have been forefront of that subject.
>
>> I agree with both Jonas and Maciej's points above about lessons for the future.
>>
>> It seems like the basic problem is that a feature which needs lots of
>> work collecting use cases and developer feedback requires a setting
>> which isn't intimidating for developers -- but ultimately, if it wants
>> to land in a spec, it needs the perspective and experience of
>> implementors and editors.
>
> I think we all agree on that :)
>
>> A few humble thoughts
>>
>> -Have the CG recruit an experienced implementor or editor to
>> participate more or less from the beginning. This may short-circuit
>> time spent on solutions that won't work for esoteric reasons, and
>> there will be at least one person with one foot in both worlds.
>
> This would be awesome.
>
>> -Cross-post significant outputs & decisions to whatwg, public-webapps,
>> etc... E.g. collected use cases, strawman proposals, recommendations,
>> etc... Even with the help of an implementors/editor, the ideas that
>> survive are those that withstand the scrutiny of the entire community
>> and getting that scrutiny early is nearly always better.
>
> Cross posting is always risky. If the items under discussion are still
> maliable then what happens is two discussions break out between two
> lots of un-related groups and things get messy.
>
> I'd be up for this route only if it was very clear of the role of each
> party, and lines could be drawn that properly segment the discussions.
> i.e.,
>
> 1) CG: "We have collected enough use cases from a wide spread of
> authors; we are now presenting this back to the WHATWG - if you wish
> to follow along with possible solutions, please take part there"
> 2) WG: discusses possible solutions and *whenever* there is doubt
> about what an author would prefer to do or what they will understand,
> it gets bounced back to the CG
> 3) CG: present the WG's dilema in a succinct way that presumes no
> prior knowledge, and solicit feedback from authors outside of the WG
> list, which is then fed back to the WG.
> 4) WG: makes decisions based on that feedback.
>
> That to me would work best for both communities.

I think the sentiment behind these to good, but I'd caution against
relying on process and specified roles.

The goal here shouldn't be to slice up areas of responsibility -- that
seems likely to contribute to -- not mitigate -- people digging in
their heels. It's a good feature that anyone can wear whatever hat
they like.

My observation is that when good stuff happens, it's because a set of
people dedicate themselves dispassionately to doing whatever required
to pursue a good outcome -- not because of any formal process which is
ultimately unenforceable.