But if you were the one who tuned out, then isn’t it uncharitable to describe it as their failing to make you aware of the vote? Isn’t it on you to stay in the loop?
Surely they can’t start just pinging everyone who might have cared at some point during the time to get involved.
I get what you're saying but making interminable arguments and keeping the "debate" going is a tactic. There's that CIA sabotage manual with the section about meetings and conferences, it can feel like that. The duration of these debates aren't usually measured in hours, days, or weeks, but years. And the people who dragging them on and staying in the fights are employed full-time to do exactly that.
It got to the point where I believed that subgrid was dead. FF implemented it but absolutely no one else did, for years.
Is it our fault for tuning out of the debate? Yep. But tactics were employed to achieve that exact outcome. I'm fine admitting that I tuned out. But it was a battle of attrition waged by people who were fine holding up progress indefinitely.
Is that how you want decisions to be made?
Ultimately I'm not too concerned what you call the masonry feature. However the debate over what to call it was an extreme case of bikeshedding. I would have rather given up the fight over semantics to resolve the non-issues and ship the feature years ago. As it stands we're still years away from actually being able to use the feature in production.
I've stopped waiting for companies, committees, or projects to change course. I don't have an incentive to build consensus within a group of people who fundamentally disagree that the thing I need should exist. Why bother? I have an incentive to spend my time building features that users will use.