[html4all] bugzilla

[Robert J Burns]

Dear Co-Chairs,

After giving the bugzilla system a try, I have to say I don't think  
its working any better than the previous approaches. Ian still thinks  
his job as the WG’s editor is to provide one-line zinger responses to  
legitimate issues raised by WG members and subsequently resolve the  
bug report. This is inappropriate. Instead, bugzilla should be used  
for substantive discussion by the WG and try to arrive at suitable  
solutions to the issues. Certainly the editor, the chairs and other WG  
members should be involved in that, but the goal is not to dispatch  
the issue as quickly as possible with a one-liner.

Like the many threads opened on public-html, the problem is not that  
legitimate issues are being raised. The problem is that some WG  
members (and Ian has set the example here) feel that it is appropriate  
to shoot down legitimate issues with inappropriate and often inane  
responses. The draft will not improve without an end to that.

For any workgroup to make effective progress it has to have an editor  
responsive to the needs of that WG.

Focussing on things like demand and whether implementors will  
implement is entirely unhelpful. No WG member would even suggest a  
proposal or raise an issue if that WG member thought that implementors  
wouldn't be willing to fix the problem and that there was a demand for  
a feature or a need to fix something. Add to that the fact that any  
speculation about the overall need, demand or likelihood of UA  
implementation is simply the hunch of one WG member against the hunch  
of another WG member, and it is clear that this line of debate is not  
leading us anywhere.

If indeed vendor members of this WG really don't want to implement  
certain things we should get all of that out on the table so we all  
understand what is taboo. Absent that it is impossible to know what  
implementors will implement. My impression is that most are anxiously  
awaiting some real substantive improvements from this WG (which we  
haven't done yet except for perhaps MediaElement and Event-Source).

So these canned answers are again singularly unhelpful for the WG.  
These responses appear to simply be obstacles and disruptive for WG  
progress. As it stands, there is very little in the draft that would  
benefit HTML users and authors. The parsing algorithm is perhaps the  
most important thing currently in the draft, yet if it isn't changed  
to make updates easier, then the next HTML WG will have to agin deal  
with the same UA compatibility issues we face now. There are many  
content model and semantic facilities proposed by WG members that  
could make HTML5 a win for users, authors and implementors alike. We  
only have to get the editor on board with making those changes.

Take care,
Rob