[Standards] A Meta-Discussion about the Standards Process

Daniel Gultsch daniel at gultsch.de
Fri Jan 17 10:26:27 UTC 2020

First of all: People move mountains all the time. That’s how the new
Hong Kong airport got built.

I think that both approaches
* Status quo + Super-Inbox
* Follow XEP-0001

have potential to improve the current situation. The problem with the
status quo of how Council makes its decisions is that it is a
combination of tribal law and seemingly arbitrary judgment calls. If
we want to continue with the current status quo we need to codify the
rules that Council has been following in XEP-0001. To outsiders our
decisions must not seem arbitrary. If my XEP got rejected I need to
know why and I need to know that Council followed rules or guidelines
instead of just not liking me personally. For example, I remember the
rejection of MUC Light as being highly  controversial and not very
well received by the authors.[1]

Codifying our current rules in XEP-0001, even though I believe that
our current rules in combination with Super-Inbox would work out
somewhat OK, is the mountain that *I* don’t want to move.


[1]: Take that with a grain of salt. That was at the time of my very
first Summit and I had just become a member and I might remember drama
where there wasn’t really any drama.

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