Re: Participating in W3C Standards Development‏

On 29 Apr 2010, at 1:12 AM, Axel Dahmen wrote:

> To whom it may concern,
>
> on the W3C website it says "Participate - W3C invites the public to  
> participate in W3C via discussion lists, events, blogs,  
> translations, and other means described below."
>
> After unsuccessfully trying to constructively participate in the CSS  
> and DOM mailing lists I now don't believe that the above claim is  
> actually lived.
>
> I have made a few contributions pointing to missing features in  
> existing standards and trying to enhance upcoming standards. Yet I  
> don't get a reaction on my postings.
>
> Once I had a constructive discussion in the CSS mailing list but  
> that ceased from one day to another. My contributions to the DOM are  
> plainly disregarded.
>
> This is very frustrating, particularly because my contributions are  
> not junk I just throw into public. For most of them I have been  
> revising and researching the background to my comments for almost a  
> week.
>
>
> Is ignoring contributions the way the W3C understands the term  
> "participate"?
>
> Your response is highly appreciated. Even to this e-mail.

Hello Axel,

I've looked around the archives a bit. For instance, I see a response  
from the HTML WG editor regarding one of your proposals:
   http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=9337

And I see a discussion here:
   http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=6155

And here:
  http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=9235

I have not looked at all of the threads on which you participated or  
sent ideas (and I have not looked for comments related to the Dom).  
But I do see discussion and contributions from a variety of people on  
the list. For the comments I looked at, your suggestions were not  
simply ignored. It does look like the HTML WG has not taken them up.  
That is a separate matter, and I do understand that that WG has a high  
bar for accepting proposals, from people formally in the WG or anybody  
else.

The HTML WG adopted a decision policy in November 2009 [1]. I believe  
that the policy sets the expectation that the Editor will make a  
certain number of decisions on behalf of the group, and if those who  
send comments are not satisfied with the Editor's decision, there is  
an escalation process to the WG. I have not researched whether you  
have pursued the escalation path.

  _ Ian

[1] http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html

>
> Yours, sincerely,
> Axel Dahmen
> www.axeldahmen.de
>
>
>

--
Ian Jacobs (ij@w3.org)    http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs/
Tel:                                      +1 718 260 9447

Received on Thursday, 29 April 2010 12:36:14 UTC