On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 3:36 PM, Greg Grossmeier greg@wikimedia.org wrote:
See also: The general rule among many engineering departments at WMF is "If it didn't happen on the list (or somewhere similarly public and indexable) it didn't happen."
Wikitech is great for discussing things with a wider audience especially where we need to seek opinions of developers outside the staff. But most decisions people make are documented on a wiki, Bugzilla, and/or their preferred project management tool. A mailing list is quite bad at reaching a consensus decision on something, as evidenced by the fact that we hold RFCs on a wiki, and not here.
No one is suggesting that we should make all decisions via teleconferencing. If you read Jon's comment with good faith, he obviously wants to reach common ground with Brad on a contentious issue, and suggested using a medium that is different than what we've tried already. Brad has brought this up repeatedly on the list and Talk:Typography Refresh, discussing this with both end users who disagreed and fellow staff members. Little apparent progress has been made in reaching consensus. Jon's trying to be respectful and reach common ground with a coworker. I don't think anyone should be taken to task for such behavior, not when (as you say) Jon's clearly been part of a team that has pushed for better documentation of decisions than just in-office face to face meetings.
In short: mountain out of a mole hill. Don't assume people don't care about public discussion because they want to have a 1-1 with someone whose opinion they think is important.