Standards Queues

"Ideas enter the system far faster than they leave - and they can come from anywhere. But to progress, you need implementers. They are finite, already busy, and often advancing their own priorities. On top of that, every proposal competes for wide review in privacy, security, architecture, accessibility, and internationalization. Each of those specialties is even more finite, even more busy, and even more backed up."

"So an idea lands in hundreds - even thousands - of inboxes, waiting for attention. We might not even notice it as it whips past among all the others. Even if we do, it might just get starred in email or left open in a tab for "later." Sometimes that idea is a book, or an explainer, or suddenly has 20 replies. Instead of needing five minutes to read and consider, it becomes intimidating."

"At some point it just sits. It might wait weeks, months, or even years before someone comments. Why? Because everyone has jobs with other tasks. The queues are full. And the longer it sits, the more things change around it. The more it unloads from memory. The more intimidating it becomes to return to. It has to get through a whole lot of asynchronous back-and-forth between implementers, spec writers, and test writers before reaching baseline usability."

Web standards progress is slowed primarily by queueing bottlenecks rather than technical complexity. Ideas arrive faster than they can be reviewed or implemented. Implementers, reviewers for privacy, security, architecture, accessibility, and internationalization are limited and often occupied with other priorities. Proposals land in many inboxes and may be overlooked, starred, or left open for later, turning short reviews into intimidating commitments. Items can sit for weeks, months, or years before receiving comments. As they age they lose context, face more surrounding changes, and require extensive asynchronous coordination among implementers, spec writers, and test writers before reaching baseline usability. Weak coordination makes abandoning or altering invested work difficult.

Read at Bkardell