This is all by design in a decentralized, permissionless infrastructure. The github nips repo works for a circle of developers, of which many take influence, and would like to contribute but doing so on a permissioned platform is getting annoying.

 There is nothing wrong using it as the defacto repository or a model for "The Nostr" local to everyone that wants to take influence. The problem is that nostr is too good and using any other system is starting to get painful (damn you developers! ✊). 

Just let the ideas compete with other specs. Make a whitelist relay where you and others curate and incubate the ideas. Others could fork on their own relays, but no one needs to listen - unless it actually makes sense for the client.

Ultimately, its a public announcement of "i'm using this spec" and you don't need to leave nostr to be part of the "official" conversation. 

 I basically agree, but I don't think people are spending the necessary time on making sure consensus works. Fragmentation is ok, but the target is maximum interoperability, not maximum fragmentation. Everyone making up their own specs is an unbalanced approach, just as running everything through one permissioned source is unbalanced. Of the two, I personally prefer the github model, because it's proven to work, while the bizarre bazar is untested. But I'm willing to participate in experimentation with a middle ground. 

 GitHub is a reasonable single point or anarchy. 

 The events produced are their own interoperability check. 

 You could say the same of all software. Just because slack doesn't talk to discord doesn't make them members of the same protocol. Interoperability doesn't happen by accident. 

 Maybe you're arguing that standards can be inferred by published events. Sort of. I think that was always the goal for NIPs. But that's like saying documentation isn't necessary, just go read the source code. 

 Static documentation isn't necessary, it's true, but it's useful marketing material or a basis for discussion.

Nostr has a built-in incentive for people to use other people's events, so that they can capture part of the same audience.

An open protocol is a novel idea whose time has come. We're just embracing it. 

 Working code is the ultimate standard in the end. 

 The target is not maximum interoperability. It's maximum usefulness for the end user. Interoperability is one important factor in this, but not the only one. 

 Okey doke. If we want this to go global, we’re going to need some type of governance. We had a similar discussion at #SEC02 when someone started to design a protocol that was ‘better than #nostr’ but not compatible.