xml-dev - Re: W3C public lists (was Re: The Power of Groves)

["Simon St.Laurent" <simonstl@simonstl.com>]

At 10:08 AM 2/9/00 +0100, Daniel Veillard wrote:
>  If the WG didn't provide a response it's an error and as staff contact I'm
>partly reponsible for this. Is there any specific comment you made that
>you would like being answered now, please point me to it I will dig in
>the WG archives to provide the answer.

Getting answers to year-old posts is not very exciting, I'm afraid, though
some of my more recent comments on the design of XHTML, mostly minor nits,
appear to have gone to /dev/null as well.

The point isn't that I want specific answers to _my_ questions - the point
is that public forums where the W3C has no obligation to answer discussion
are more or less useless.  Why should I post to a comments list when the
result, for more than a year, is silence?  Why should anyone post to those
lists, except to tilt at windmills?

>  Your posts to the comment list about the Requirements document (XLink)
>and about Xlink/XPointer design had been reviewed by the WG, like any other
>sensible post on the matter sent to the list. Sorry if we didn't provide
>direct specific feedback. The review is done in a rather asynchronous way
>(i.e. when the WG schedule meeting time to discuss those), so it tend to
>bring the interactivity close to 0. The best way is when someone in the 
>group specifically monitors the list and answer immediately the simple
>question. However when it's about a design choice this has to go through the
>full WG process and then cannot be answered immediately.

While it's vaguely gratifying to hear that someone read the messages, this
barely sounds like a process, and does nothing to sustain the forum or
public interest in the forum.  Even simple questions about the substance of
specs - I guess they're design issues - rarely receive timely answers.

I keep hearing that the W3C's resources are badly stretched, so there
probably isn't time or money for such work.  Making the public lists a more
important part of the W3C development process might pay dividends, however.

Simon St.Laurent
XML Elements of Style / XML: A Primer, 2nd Ed.
Building XML Applications
Inside XML DTDs: Scientific and Technical
Cookies / Sharing Bandwidth
http://www.simonstl.com