Re: ISSUE-76: Need feedback on splitting Microdata into separate specification

James Graham wrote:
> Henri Sivonen wrote:
>> On Oct 16, 2009, at 16:35, Shelley Powers wrote:
>
>>> So how can that make you a good judge, even a mediocre judge of what 
>>> works "best" when it comes to metadata?
>>
>> I'm not suggesting that Microdata is the best solution in the 
>> absolute sense. I'm just suggesting that it fixes some flaws that 
>> alternative solutions have, so it's better (or less bad). I encourage 
>> you to help the WG make Microdata even better.
>
> One point that has not, as far as I can tell, thus far been raised in 
> favour of keeping Microdata in the spec: Hixie has previously reported 
> that the amount of feedback on sections that have been removed has 
> dropped compared to when they were in the main spec (sorry I only 
> remember this from IRC and don't have a reference handy). So keeping 
> microdata in the main spec ensures that it receives the greatest 
> possible amount of input from people interested in HTML5 but unaware 
> of all the history behind what is in different documents. Such people 
> exist for sure because they regularly appear on IRC asking why X is 
> missing from HTML5, where X is a feature that has been spun off into a 
> different spec. Having microdata in the HTML5 spec for Last Call in 
> particular will ensure that the attention and wide review that happens 
> during the this period also focuses attention on microdata, thus 
> helping to improve the technology.
>
Then if the feedback for some of the sections has dropped when they were 
removed from the spec, I would say that there is less interest in the 
sections, and the decision to remove them was a good one.

People give feedback where they have interest or concerns. It could be 
that the amount of feedback on the sections before they were dropped 
could have been concern since the sections were in the HTML5 document. 
Once they were dropped from the HTML5 specification, there was less 
concern, and hence, less interest.

As for Microdata, about the only interest I've seen so far on this 
section is concern about keeping it, either in the HTML5 spec, or all 
together. That, and the vocabularies, which have already been removed. 
It could very well be that Microdata will receive more interest if it is 
defined as a stand alone document. Or it will continue with mediocre 
interest, and then the HTML5 doc will be bloated with an entire section 
that really doesn't interest anyone.

This is not Madison Avenue, we are not Mad Men, and the HTML5 document 
is not an ad campaign. Its purpose is not to promote anything except 
that which is essential to HTML5.

Shelley

Received on Friday, 16 October 2009 17:42:15 UTC