Re: [hybi] draft-ietf-hybi-thewebsocketprotocol-00

<L.Wood@surrey.ac.uk> Mon, 24 May 2010 19:44 UTC

From: L.Wood@surrey.ac.uk
To: ietf@adambarth.com
Date: Mon, 24 May 2010 20:44:00 +0100
Thread-Topic: [hybi] draft-ietf-hybi-thewebsocketprotocol-00
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Subject: Re: [hybi] draft-ietf-hybi-thewebsocketprotocol-00
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On 24 May 2010, at 19:03, Adam Barth wrote:
> 
> Generally, the whatwg mailing list has a higher ratio of technical
> content to meta-discussion,

Unfortunately, very little of that content is relevant to websockets - or even to whatwg's own documents. It's not technical discussion, it's not metadiscussion, it's just discussion.

Searching on topics in the whatwg list archive for discussion of websockets:
May 2010 to date - 21 messages out of 354
April 2010 - 25 messages out of 375
March 2010 - 52 out of 384.

compare with the hybi mailing list, where discussion on matters pertaining to websockets is pretty much everything.

I didn't bother going through the whatwg IRC archives at
http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/ - sample content:
[20:59] * gsnedders wonders what self-raising flour is in Swedish, and what grease-proof paper is  

> which means it's more approachable for
> developers who don't normally participate in standards.

which might be because it's not a standards-oriented mailing list, and because they're not there to discuss standards.

> For example,
> I've encouraged various members of the WebKit community to raise their
> concerns and questions about HTML5 in the whatwg instead of on
> public-html because, historically, I've found that they get
> friendlier, more productive responses, which encourages them to
> participate further.

HTML5 and public-html are not primarily concerned with websockets.

> If we exclude the whatwg, we're likely to miss out on these points of
> view.

We're also missing the points of view of members of rec.pets.cats.

I think the websockets specification can manage without a treatise on CSS and colours, or on new video codecs. Whether it can manage with Hixie as editor is a more immediately pressing (and yes, process) question.

>  Although folks like you and I can handle participating in this
> forum, there's a group of folks who find this sort of forum
> intimidating and unwelcoming.  Of course, another solution is to
> encourage folks on this list to be friendlier and more welcoming.  One
> way to start down that road is to avoid speaking in absolutes or the
> imperative.

to encourage discussion not relevant to websockets or to the IETF?

You're attempting to deflect the conversation from serious process issues that have significant effect on the development of the protocol.

Lloyd Wood
L.Wood@surrey.ac.uk
http://sat-net.com/L.Wood

[hybi] draft-ietf-hybi-thewebsocketprotocol-00 SM
Re: [hybi] draft-ietf-hybi-thewebsocketprotocol-00 L.Wood
Re: [hybi] draft-ietf-hybi-thewebsocketprotocol-00 Adam Barth
Re: [hybi] draft-ietf-hybi-thewebsocketprotocol-00 L.Wood
Re: [hybi] draft-ietf-hybi-thewebsocketprotocol-00 SM
Re: [hybi] draft-ietf-hybi-thewebsocketprotocol-00 Sander Striker
Re: [hybi] draft-ietf-hybi-thewebsocketprotocol-00 Julian Reschke
[hybi] Venue of discussion, was: draft-ietf-hybi-… Julian Reschke