Re: WebPlatform Browser Support Info

I understand it does not feel so urgent to you, but when I work on or edit
Web Platform Documentation wiki pages, I usually want to add compatibility
data (as much as possible for me) to the page (I think this workflow makes
sense). I am already reading through the subject in order to provide
accurate information, so I want the information to be as complete as
possible.

Currently, there is a note that instructs the contributor not to touch the
compatibility tables, because it will be automated. Right now, we lose
data, opportunities and nice efforts due to that note. I know I avoided
entering the information because of that note, even for places where
external compatibility data would probably not have information (but who
knows?).

If you intend to allow people to submit pull requests, I think it should
happen as we speak. People (me, anyway) want to help bring up this website
with any information they can possibly provide. Not supporting that right
now is a loss of a potential community effort.

(Note that while the documentation should be filled with educative and
reference content, a lot of developers just want to know whether the
feature can be used, rather than how to use it, so a seemingly simple use
case is lost during this time, until this project reaches any user facing
milestone)


☆*PhistucK*


On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 12:36 PM, Doug Schepers <schepers@w3.org> wrote:

> Hey, folks–
>
>
> On 10/19/13 5:19 AM, Tobie Langel wrote:
>
>> On Saturday, October 19, 2013 at 11:12 AM, PhistucK wrote:
>>
>>> I did not see any suggestion or goal regarding one thing - would
>>> there be an API or an administration page or a form within
>>> webplatform.org (http://webplatform.org) that could be used to add
>>> data, or will the data come only from external sources? I assume
>>> the former, but unless I missed it, not having this as a goal
>>> implies the latter.
>>>
>>
> You're right that that's missing from the current roadmap. It's something
> we've talked about, but haven't yet decided how to handle it.
>
> There are basically two ways to do this:
> 1) Allow users to add support information manually in the wiki, like MDN
> does;
>
> 2) Require users to submit tests, which can be run to verify support by
> any given browser.
>
> On the one hand, it's much easier to do #1. On the other hand, it's less
> useful, less reliable, and harder to maintain over time.
>
> Obviously, I favor #2. Given that W3C needs to create and run tests
> anyway, I think that's the way to go long term, especially since we also
> have data from other test-based reliable sources. But I'm not opposed to a
> short-term solution using approach #1.
>
>
> BTW, another advantage of the test-based approach (#2) is that it scales
> to more devices, browsers, etc. Once you have a test, you can run it for
> any environment (desktop, laptop, tablet, mobile, TV, set-top box, game
> system, etc.) and collect data on that, which readers can drill into to fit
> their need. It also means that for any given test, you're comparing apples
> to apples, so there should be no disputed results (and no edit wars).
>
>
>
>  I'm not sure what Doug has in mind here, but for the purpose of the
>> current conversation around the data model, users adding data via a
>> UI can be considered as just another external resource.
>>
>
> Yeah, for the beta, we just want to display data that is already out there.
>
> Short term, we can let people submit pull requests via git/github to add
> data to the repo. Medium- to long-term, we should add a UI to do so.
>
> Regards-
> -Doug
>