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Rick Jelliffe wrote:
> But losing expertise is the point. At some stage, the young thrusting
> achievers become the corrupt old guard, unable and unaware of other
> possibilities and bound by career motives to push for the centrality of
> their concerns and expertise. You want some churn, fresh blood, etc.
Hmmmmm, no, I fully agree with Mike here. In my experience that's not at
all how it works, in fact it's often quite the opposite. The worst
problems I've seen in WGs have always come from "fresh blood" (not all
or even most of it thankfully). They are mostly people who are a bit too
prompt to forget that the reason they're on a WG is *not* because
they're experts, but only because they work for someone who's paid for
them to be there. They think they have all the best ideas and reinvent
the whell under a zillion new terminologies. Since they're not burnt out
from the previous years of work on the spec, they have lots of energy to
push their nonsense (though surprisingly little to actually pause and
listen to the others, or dig up past discussion to try to understand why
something is this way, or even read the drafts for that matter). Those
are by far the worst. [Note that any resemblance between this
description and any participant on the SVG WG is purely fortuitous.]
The "corrupt old guard", at least the part of it that hasn't holed
itself out in the higher Andes out of bitterness. It is true that there
are insularity problems, sometimes strong, but what you suggest wouldn't
help (most WGs get fresh blood on a regular basis anyway).
I very highly doubt that anyone does standards work out of "career
motives", that would be pretty much like the proverbial effing for
virginity. Or if it's a reality somewhere, I'd like to hear how it works
out ;)
> Keeping a two year group membership would alter the dynamic of spec
> development and encourage layered, non-monlithic specs that each were more
> implementable. The old guard will still be around for advise and comment.
I don't think that being around for advice and comments is sufficient.
What you need is for the people who have gotten burnt bad trying to
write, finalize, and implement to have enough clout to prevent the
newcomers to make the same mistakes they did.
--
Robin Berjon
Senior Research Scientist
Expway, http://expway.com/
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