Re: [hybi] email granularity, was: WebSockets feedback

[Greg Wilkins <[e-mail]>]

As this thread is turning into a bit of vote,
I'll state my preference for a mostly threaded
model.

However, some level of aggregation is OK, but what I didn't like
about the last mega-feedback post was three fold:

 + it mixed significantly different topics, such as
   editing style for drafts, discussion of requirements
   and discussions of new features.

 + it spanned a significant time frame, so that topics
   that I thought we had well and truly dealt with
   have been raised again... so we are just going to
   go around and around again.     Which is not to
   say that Ian should not have his say on those
   topics, but if it had been given in a more timely
   manner in the original thread - then it would
   have been more productive and less wasteful of
   the time of others.

 + How does one respond to such a mega post if you
   don't agree with it?   Aggregation is fine for
   people who are silent and mostly reading for a summary.
   But if you are an active participant, then responding
   to such a mega thread is really difficult.  Firstly
   it encourages point by point replies (of which I'm often
   guilty), which I think prolong disagreement and are
   not good for converging on consensus.   Secondly
   any future discussion is disconnected from the
   thread of the past discussion, so context is lost,
   arguments revisited and we lather, rinse and repeat!


Actually, my real preference is that we get started
using trac to focus on individual issues and nail
them down 1 by 1 to get a good statement of requirements.
Without that, I think we will never converge on
consensus, regardless of how we thread our emails.

cheers