On 3/21/07, charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com wrote:
Let's not get too black-and-white about this, if at all possible. Maybe hundreds were literally involved in the development process, but that doesn't mean they all support all of the final out-turn. I think that isn't even how democracy works.
I think sometimes one accepts two steps forward and one back as progress.
True, but this was two steps forward and three back, because we now have a worse mess than before, with *four* pages tagged as policy.
Just about everyone who was involved or who commented (hundreds) support the merge. That is a cold, hard fact. Those who disagreed about details wanted to *change* V and NOR, and that was resisted. My fear from the start of the ATT process was that people might try to use it to weaken NOR and V, and Jimbo said yesterday that he'd be against that too. So we steered a very, very careful course between looking at some of the proposals for change (e.g. Phil Sandifer's exception for pop culture, which I'd have gone along with), and making sure none of the proposals got out of hand. When that one started to get expanded, we moved back to the no-change position.
That's why its completely wrong-headed to call this a "fundamental change." It was an incredibly *conservative* move -- irritatingly so for some editors.
Sarah