Re: What about many many mailing lists

At 06:13 PM 7/25/00 -0600, [email protected] wrote:
><comment type="wandering">
>   There's been some real concern stated that with a wide-open
>   policy, chaos will ensue, and work may get bogged down.
>   (Hey, it's a possibility:  don't shoot.  ;^)

And one that's materialized--c.f. comp.lang.perl.misc. (Not that I'm 
opposing a wide-open policy, as long as the rules as to what behaviour is 
unacceptable and what the ramifications of continuing it are)

>   Personally, I'm of mixed mind regarding this.  Optimally,
>   everything is wide open . . . but I do remember the IETF's
>   HTML 2.0 working group.  It got bogged down with a bunch of
>   irreconcilable (and sometimes pedantic) positions on issues
>   (tables and math, if you're wondering) that ultimately had to
>   be jettisoned from the spec for it to go forward.  I'm
>   thinking that the closed-group model is an attempt to
>   forestall this, much as W3 continued the HTML work.

I was under the impression that the WG leads would have primary yea/nay 
authority, with the group leads over them, and Larry at the top, with that 
authority exercised only when necessary (either a group is totally bogged 
down, or a decision would create major havoc in other areas, or something 
else of the sort). Basically folks could step in if they really, *really* 
needed to, and would hopefully work to make sure that wasn't necessary.

					Dan

--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski                          even samurai
[email protected]                         have teddy bears and even
                                      teddy bears get drunk