I think this is the important point.

However much we might prefer that our process didn't depend as much on GitHub - and I totally and entirely sympathize with this view - at the moment it does, and these PRs exist to ensure we document what we do.

If we, as a community, wish to change our process we should do so and update the documentation to match.

As Ralph also said, though, we depend entirely on volunteers. The reason we lean on GitHub is because this reduces the load on our volunteers, and in particular on Daniel as XMPP Editor. I might want us to be primarily list-based for XEP changes as well as discussion, but not at the expense of more effort on Daniel's part. If we had a team of volunteers (and authors) willing to manage an independent source control and provide updates that way, I'd love it. But we are where we are, and hope is not a strategy.

So, in summary, the PR is written to match current process, and while I would welcome change I'm not sure it's realistic.

Dave.