> The developer community did everything asked of them. They followed procedure, they thoroughly discussed the options available. They were careful enough to consider what to do for browsers that wouldn’t support the element—a working polyfill is readily available. Their solution even emulates the existing standardized audio and video elements. Meanwhile an Apple representative writes one email about a new attribute that only partially solves the problem and the 5 days later it’s in the spec.
So yes, it appears that not only does the standards discussion start with working code, it ends with it.
Unfortunately, the WHATWG seems to do whatever the heck it wants to most of the time and having an idea collaborated on by the development community (the <picture> element) or working code (the <time> element from that whole fiasco a few months back) doesn't seem to amount to much.