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Comment by hacknat | Hacker News Reader

That’s a flamey title. They’re objecting to them publishing their spec before the negotiations with WHATWG are over.

They're objecting to the simultaneous existence of two DOM standards, to the procedure used by W3C to move forward on the W3C's standard, and to substantive issues in the W3C's fork. Each of the objections refers to the W3C's DOM spec as a "fork". The objectors are members of the WHATWG steering group. The title seems about as neutral a description as can be written.

This is a hazard of posting into message threads rather than articles and blog posts, but "all the mainstream browser vendors object to a W3C standard" seemed interesting enough an event to override that concern.

I think it's perfectly fine to post message threads on HN. I would much rather read the source then a summary written by someone else.

I think the hazzard is just that the link was posted to the middle of the thread. It's pretty clear what's going on if you read the whole thing and not just the one linked post.

If you read the thread there's an exchange with the CEO of W3C that is a touch 'flamey'. I think the title perfectly describes what I was reading, really interesting peek at the machinations behind the tech standards we use every day.

He also gets called out on it, in a rather satisfying manner:

> othermaciej commented 2 days ago • edited 2 days ago > @jeffjaffe As someone who is neither you or @michaelchampion , I read your response to him as dismissive and insulting, and it seems to have stopped @chaals from answering his legitimate question. The tone reads like you are addressing an unruly underling, rather than a key stakeholder. If that was not your intent, you may want to recalibrate your tone.

Perhaps not altogether relevant, but certainly interesting seeing the amount of conflict that's popped up in the discussion.

The machinations behind this have being going on for years, and go much deeper.

Two chairs of the W3C's Web Platform Working Group, who both also happen to be members of the W3C Advisory Board which oversees the W3C Process, appear to have decided it's fine for them to routinely ignore the W3C Process.

Both these individuals seem to be using their positions in the W3C to pursue some kind of personal vendetta. Of course, in theory the W3C Process exists to prevent this kind of thing from happening.

One of these individuals also happens to be a W3C ex-staffer. You can read a somewhat unfavourable summary of this ongoing farcical situation (by a current W3C staff member) here: https://freenode.logbot.info/whatwg/20160614#c998179

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