From: Bruce Lilly (blilly@erols.com)
Date: Mon Jun 14 2004 - 15:10:41 CDT
Charles Lindsey wrote:
> Alexey Melnikov said:
>>As per my message posted yesterday, I think most of this note should
>>be
>>moved to USEAGE (or dropped).
The Chair has also noted that a position is expected to be supported by
well-reasoned arguments. Such as the ones that led the WG Chair over a
year ago to declare that "Re: " was out of bounds for USEFOR, and that
user and user interface issues were not grounds for interoperability
(the topic of USEPRO and indeed USEAGE).
> Be careful! There are a lot of carefully worded compromises built into
> that NOTE. To recap:
>
> With the exception of Bruce and and John, I think we had general
> agreement that the rough consensus is:
>
> A. Seth's 4 points.
> B. Strict neutrality on whether to prepend "Re:" or not.
No, there was no active WG Chair at the time to declare consensus, "rough"
or otherwise. There were no well-reasoned arguments that were substantively
different from last year's discussion which led to the out-of-bounds ruling.
Moreover, there were no "compromises"; the text differs insignificantly from
what was objected to more than a year ago.
> That is reflected in the normative text above.
The text does *not* reflect the ruling of the WG Chair made a year ago, which
was never implemented by the Document Editor.
> "Why this pussyfooting with 'MAY prepend'?
Indeed -- it's a UI issue and none of our damned business.
> it was a complex
> issue
It's not rocket science -- it is not a specific part of the defined
syntax or semantics and has no interoperability issues; it is strictly
a user and UI issue.
> So over the last couple of weeks, we have been polishing that NOTE;
> various suggestions to change the text were made and incorporated.
Suggestions that happened to be in agreement with the Document Editor's
personal opinion were incorporated; others were summarily rejected by
the Document Editor. Including the ruling -- N.B. ruling not suggestion --
of the WG Chair when the issue was last discussed (about a year ago).
> And since I posted that latest version (still quoted above), there
> have been no requests for further tweaks.
Suggestions for "tweaking" the WG makeup -- specifically replacement
of the Document Editor -- have been made. That seemed the only course
of action that could be taken due to the Document Editors clear
insubordination and summary dismissal of substantive objections as
noted above. It appears to have led to the involvement of the Area
Director and appointment of a new Chair. It does not (yet, anyway)
appear to have made any difference w.r.t. the Document Editor's
attitude and/or insubordination.
> That seems like a rough
> consensus to me, so PLEASE can we try to run with that and move on.
The Chair has confirmed the past chair's interpretation of how "rough
consensus" is to be determined, and nothing has changed in that respect
since last year's ruling.
> Therefore, I now ask the chairman to establish whether he can declare:
>
> 1. A rough consensus on that text, or
> 2. A rough consensus on that text, modulo some further tweaks, or
> 3. A continuation of this whole debate.
Mr. Excluded Middle strikes again. There are any number of things that
the Chair might do, including (but not limited to) reinforcing last
year's ruling. Or reiterating his direction that the text "be moved
to USEAGE (or dropped)".