Comments on: Comic Update: Behold Leviathan, Confused

By: Kyle Weems

Kyle Weems — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 21:07:54 +0000

@Michael – I don’t think Ian is a bad man. I don’t think the WHAT WG is filled with bad people, either. I do agree that what is going on is unacceptable, though. I think they have decided that the ends justify the means, and are deliberately creating the facade of democratic participation with the full knowledge that in fact that their participating is purely dictatorial. Consider that Jeremy Keith’s post simultaneously states that Ian is a benevolent dictator, and at the same times says WHAT WG participation is democratic. You can’t have it both ways. The merits of either case can be debated, but pretending that both are occurring is deception. And deception doesn’t simply doesn’t belong in the process.

(I don’t believe Jeremy is engaging in deception himself. I believe he’s trying to explain the group as it tries to explain itself, which I see as flawed.)

One could argue that being allowed to petition the king constitutes democracy, much as you can pretend that mailing to the WHAT WG mailing list means you have some sort of proportionately valued voice. But of course, that isn’t true.

@John – I hope your efforts have a positive, direct impact on what’s going on. I don’t believe HTML5 is quite a train wreck yet, but I believe at it’s present course, it will be by October when Last Call arrives. (Insert Ballad of Casey Jones metaphor here).

By: John Foliot

John Foliot — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 18:24:06 +0000

Last Friday, I set into motion an illustration of why the WHAT WG process is flawed – using WHAT WG rules. As an alternative Editor, I invoked ‘benevolent dictator’ status and made a minor change to an existing document that is clearly licensed [1] to allow me to do so. I then submitted that
alternative Draft to the Working Group Chairs for consideration as the next Working Draft. [2]

By all appearances now, this has caused a state of ‘crisis’ within the Working Group as there are now 2 Editors Drafts vying for the status of next Working Draft. While I can appreciate that this is seen by many as a real issue, (and others as a ‘political game’) it is an issue that was created *simply because I used the WHAT WG rules of engagement* instead of the W3C rules.

(Read the entire posting here: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Aug/0118.html )

[1 "The WHATWG version of this specification is available under a license that permits reuse of the specification text." http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-html5-20090423/ ]
[2 http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Aug/0080.html ]

By: Michael Kozakewich

Michael Kozakewich — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:58:23 +0000

Darn, and I had all these egg-salad sandwiches…

Augh! In his ‘English’ document, he mentions quoting and messes up the punctuation.
Which kind of has nothing to do with this (but since you linked that text, I decided to look around).

Anyway, as for the spec:
I don’t think he’s QUITE so bad as everyone says. He has a lot of experience, and generally sees those problems that a lot of the WHATWG members miss completely. There’s really nothing acceptable about his constant use of “I don’t understand” in well-discussed topics. I can see that he’s being contrary without adequately dispelling others’ doubts.

By: Martin Kliehm

Martin Kliehm — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:44:57 +0000

Speaking about HTML5 poetry: the HTML5 haiku contest is still running. Put your thoughts about sovereigns and rebellion in a haiku format and twitter it with the hashtag #html5haiku