Re: Group merge?

On 11/07/2011 01:02 AM, Dave Pawson wrote:
> On 7 November 2011 05:34, Manu Sporny<msporny@digitalbazaar.com>
> wrote:
>> On Monday, October 10, 2011 at 3:35 PM, Dave Pawson wrote:
>>>
>>> Marcos has stated that another group, 'Data driven standards'
>>> have goals very similar to ours.
>
> My view is that this group is more focussed on usage? Colloquial?
> Whether we are arguing over terminology is another matter, since
> usage results in data!

I don't know - something for this group to decide. We are certainly
focused on gathering data in the Data Driven Standards group... we're in
contact with CommonCrawl folks and it looks like their index is going to
work nicely for what we want to do. We'll let you guys know how the
first crawl goes.

>> The RDFa WG has just recently butted heads with Google on
>> something related to RDFa 1.1. The conversation[1][2] went
>> something like this:
>>
>> Google: People are using RDFa incorrectly. RDFa WG: Do you have
>> data to prove that? Google: Yes we do. RDFa WG: Can we see it to
>> verify it? Google: No, do the Web crawl yourself.
>
> Think how this might have been interpreted had it come from a man in
> the street? Troll, dismiss.

I think the point is that the RDFa Working Group, as a Working Group at
the W3C, is not just another "man in the street". The problem is that we
have a large number of people that we represent and that Google still
told us to get lost. This is increasingly becoming an issue with the
larger companies at W3C.

>> These sorts of conversations put W3C WGs in incredibly awkward
>> positions. We can choose to ignore the input, but at the peril of
>> Google not supporting the technology - no group can afford to say
>> no to Google.
>
> Big -1. They are a big internet player. No more. I prefer democracy.
> Otherwise we start to see the Hixie effect.

Unfortunately, that's a simplification of the current situation. Google
has their standard that they're pushing (Microdata) and we (W3C and RDFa
Community) have our standard that we're pushing (RDFa). So, it's not
simply a matter of "democracy" as both are going through the standards
process. The problem is that when a large company backs one of the
standards with a "study" and then doesn't release the data or
methodology. In that case, you have a large company (with skin in the
game) saying "trust us, we have the data"... and a loose community (with
skin in the game) saying "we'd like to see the data, because it goes
counter to the data that we have".

Ultimately, this is about making the right decision in a scientific way.

>> This is a problem for the RDFa WG because we have now put the RDFa
>> 1.1 Last Call on hold /indefinitely/ until somebody can dig up some
>> data to prove or disprove Google's claim.
>
> Is theirs a one off view, or supported by others in the WG?

Nobody else has claimed what they're claiming. However, some of the
changes are supported by the WG... but they are backwards-incompatible
for a small subset of the community and we need to understand exactly
how many people the changes will affect.

>> Everything else on how this group operates would stay the same -
>> Dave would continue to chair. We just need to get the group setup
>> and launched quickly... we have a definite set of work that needs
>> to be done and a fairly short timeframe to accomplish it in.
>
> I don't understand that statement. Which 'we' What 'set of work'?
> Will you be expanding on that tomorrow (today?)

"We" == The RDF Web Apps Working Group, community, a handful of other
people in Working Groups that have hit this issue.

"set of work" == Crawl the web for RDFa and Microdata usage data... more
here:

http://www.w3.org/community/data-driven-standards/wiki/Data-in-html-crawl-design

We wrote a bit about it here:

http://www.w3.org/community/data-driven-standards/2011/11/07/launch/

>> So, we're going to be launching the Data Driven Standards group
>> tomorrow - please join us over there if you'd like to take part in
>> this Google/RDFa work. The two groups are really doing very similar
>> work - we really should merge them (and use the CG name that is
>> more descriptive).
>>
>> Thoughts? Is there anyone that feels strongly against merging into
>> the "Data Driven Standards" CG?
>
> My primary concern is the mimimal input on this group, based on which
> a merger would make sense.

Okay, well - we're going to start the work over the next few weeks...
I'd love to see the two groups merge, but if we're really doing
different things, then so be it. :)

-- manu

-- 
Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny)
Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
blog: Standardizing Payment Links - Why Online Tipping has Failed
http://manu.sporny.org/2011/payment-links/

Received on Sunday, 20 November 2011 15:38:27 UTC