> Especially in the early phase of an extension, you want to encourage experimentation with different approaches. Early selection would be disadvantageous.

With any standard you can experiment what you want, nobody* even can prevent you from doing it no matter how inaccessible the standardization process is.

The standardization process comes into play when you think you have found a good solution, which should be adopted by THE standard respectively the ecosystem.

What matters is what the standard itself looks like, do you have a coherent specification which specifies the current way of doing things, including optional components?

Or do you have a set of independent ways of doing it, because the standardization process doesn't actually decide what is the correct way of doing something (e.g. managing a group chat)

*okay technically not correct. Law can e.g. decide making e2ee illegal technology and criminalize even playing around with it.

> The standardization process comes into play when you think you have found a good solution, which should be adopted by THE standard respectively the ecosystem.

Na, the standardization process starts much earlier. Using the example of the IETF process, after which XMPP standardization process is largely modeled: standardization starts when you submit an I-D to IETF and/or approach an IETF WG.

> What matters is what the standard itself looks like, do you have a coherent specification which specifies the current way of doing things, including optional components? Or do you have a set of independent ways of doing it, because the standardization process doesn't actually decide what is the correct way of doing something (e.g. managing a group chat)

Well put and I totally agree (I think no one would have a reason to disagree with that statement).