[Bug 14363] Update the registration mechanisms

http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=14363

--- Comment #7 from Jon Ribbens <jon-w3c@unequivocal.co.uk> 2011-10-07 00:44:18 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #6)
> I wouldn't expect any software to literally crawl the wiki. You'd do it
> manually, or have a custom script to do it.

That's my whole point. Every "conformance checker" would do the scraping
slightly differently, because there's no defined "correct way" of doing it. It
would be incredibly fragile. Computers trying to parse non-computer-readable
formats is never a good idea - it being a mandated part of a fundamental
standard is inconceivable. Nobody's going to do it manually, that's ridiculous.

> > (b) Anyone anywhere could, at any time, blank the wiki page and hey presto a
> > very large percentage of all HTML 5 documents in the world are suddenly
> > invalid.
> 
> *shrug*. Vandalism happens. It is trivially reverted. This is not an issue.

I realise that you do indeed have a lot of authority here, but nevertheless
"argument from authority" is still a logical fallacy. It is not "not an issue"
simply because you say so.

> Someone could crack into the HTML spec's Web server and changed the required
> DOCTYPE to <!DOCTYPE LADYGAGA> but that wouldn't make all the pages invalid.

People hacking into secure servers is one thing. People trivially changing
deliberately insecure public wikis is another.

> > (c) It makes the W3C HTML standard dependent on an anonymous third-party
> > website.
> 
> Anonymous?

Have you checked the 'whois' for whatwg.org recently? Or, for that matter, the
whatwg.org web site?

The final HTML specification should not be fundamentally dependent on any site
other than w3.org, ietf.org, or similar.

> The W3C hasn't fared well with having computer-readable data in the past.
> (DTDs have caused the W3C to essentially DDOS itself by having lots of badly
> authored software read it continuously.)

And this problem is somehow avoided by having the list hosted on a
less-well-funded web site instead?

> Anyway, the whole registration mechanism really needs updating in general.
> Just need to work out what the right solution is first.

Excellent, well, hopefully things will improve.

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Received on Friday, 7 October 2011 00:44:21 UTC