Long-standing WGs weren't always there! They have origin stories too. Those stories get lost to time because it's convenient not to focus on them and to perpetuate the idea that the WG is now where "things happen". And it would break the nemawashi to suggest otherwise.
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So how did our now-ancient groups come to be? Like mighty redwoods, they also grew from seeds. Every big, important WG was launched by an upstart idea that slowly, slowly gained traction.
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...and here's the dirty secret: that earliest, most intense and furious iteration *didn't happen inside a chartered WG*!
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There's a material difference between road building and volcanic erruptions. Both move a bit of soil around, but they aren't remotely similar in their pace or intensity.
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"major" WGs get formed at SDOs by folks who generally all have implemented something that maybe even is partially interoperable and want a forum to protect what's working and sand off the sharp bits.
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The path is always: DESIGN → ITERATE → SHIP & STANDARDISE
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I get into some of it at length here: https://infrequently.org/2018/06/effective-standards-work-part-2-threading-the-needle/ …
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The important thing to recall is that the earliest work that led to the core of what our major WGs tend *didn't happen in committee either* So why would we expect new things to be different?
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And yet we do. Insiders are always keen for work to happen in the rooms they're already in (where they have implicit veto and social capital from previous battles won/lost). For early stage exploration, this is a trap!
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The insiders don't feel the glacial rate of progress as a problem...they're too busy as it is! And folks presenting upstart ideas didn't convince all the old-timers that their thing was really *needed*...we've gotten by without it, after all! And we work by consensus here, soo...
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These forums are toxic for exploration and iteration of big new things because *that's not what they're chartered to do*. Never were, never will be (see previous thread).
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In conclusion, WGs that tend to the care and feeding of important systems didn't spring fully formed from the head of Zeus either! It's unreasonable to expect such miracles to happen at *any* moment, past or future, so we use CGs and incubation to make safer spaces for new ideas.
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