Re: New draft of mobileOK Scheme 2008-11-06

On 07/11/2008 10:59, Phil Archer wrote:
> 
> 
> Jo Rabin wrote:
> [..]
> 
>>
>> I anticipate some proposed text from the Member from Suffolk 
>> addressing re-insertion of references to machine readable claims. 
> 
> See e-mail sent late last night: 
> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-bpwg/2008Nov/0010.html
> 
Thanks! (Makes mental note to read last night's email before sending out 
today's email)

> 
> 
> Both you and he
>> are welcome to join the little task force.
>>
>> In this context I need to say that the organisation I represent has no 
>> plans to use the logo under license - so I think I have now reached 
>> the point where I need to understand
>> a) what the use cases are, as I mentioned above
>> b) that this is really going to get used in some way by content providers
>> c) that some search engine somewhere is planning to look for machine 
>> readable labels.
>>
> 
> Here's what one rather large search engine told me on a recent visit to 
> Silicon Valley: You create the data, make sure it's not full of spam, 
> and we'll use it. But don't expect us to make a public statement on the 
> issue to help you on your way.
> 
> In other words, if you want a search engine or two to make a statement 
> about the usefulness of mobileOK, or any other machine-readable label, 

I think there is a difference between mobileOK and general machine 
readable labels. Today (and remember that things have moved on since we 
started discussing this three and a half years ago) mobileOK contains 
only machine testable aspects. So a search engine that is truly 
interested in whether a site is mobile friendly is likely to test it. 
Ours (find.mobi) does at least.

To my mind this is rather different from using labels to express 
judgements that cannot be determined by a machine other than by reading 
the label. To me this is what labels are useful for and naturally I 
comment your and POWDER's work in this very important area.

If we still had a non machine testable aspect to mobileOK then I think 
the labelling stuff would be very useful. As things stand today I think 
labelling is at best moot in respect of mobileOK.

So far as it being used by browsers, well, from a mobile browser's 
perspective finding a label on content it has already retrieved is 
really all too late, isn't it?

However, on this theme, I also think that labels are going to be very 
useful indeed for labelling sites for the discovery of mobile friendly 
content - of various kinds, where mobileOK is just one very basic type 
of mobile friendly content. To my mind this is one of the major 
unresolved issues to come out of the CT work, to which it is also 
relevant. So perhaps it would be sensible to wrap the mobileOK claim 
into something of more general utility?

Jo

> before you decide to use it, you'll never decide to use it. If, however, 
> you really want search engines to have an easy way to identify 
> mobile-friendly content, and if you want to encourage content providers 
> along a route that ends up with more mobile friendly content that they 
> can advertise as such, then you need to create the best platform 
> possible for that to happen.
> 
> It seems to me that, given the feelings expressed around this issue and 
> the fact that, for all our best efforts, POWDER is going to be at PR, 
> not Rec, next month, that including some examples of what you MAY do to 
> make mOK machine-readable in this doc is a pretty basic step that we can 
> take without upsetting the apple cart too much or creating dependencies 
> we could do without.
> 
> Phil.
> 
>> I suggest that if we are to continue this work then We really need to 
>> get to the bottom of this, with the idea that it all needs to be 
>> sorted out by Dec 1 which is the end of review for mobileOK Basic 
>> Tests 1.0 [MOK] (sic). Otherwise probably the simplest thing is to 
>> drop the idea of a license and the logo till we are clearer on it, and 
>> publish the scheme document just as a way of linking together Best 
>> Practices, mobileOK Basic Tests 1.0 and the Checker.
>>
>> Sorry if I seem to be a bit fed up with this topic. But I am.
>>
>> Jo
>>
>> On 07/11/2008 09:31, Francois Daoust wrote:
>>>
>>> I confess I'm a bit surprised to see that the section "Claiming 
>>> mobileOK Conformance using POWDER" was entirely removed.
>>>
>>> My recollection of our discussion was that:
>>>  1. it is not mandatory to use a machine-readable claim to claim 
>>> conformance to mobileOK
>>>  2. people may still use the machine-readable claim, and that's 
>>> something we still want to promote as a good practice.
>>>
>>> In short, I think the document should just provide several ways to 
>>> claim conformance to mobileOK:
>>>  - the logo
>>>  - POWDER
>>>  [ - and possibly RDFa although I'm not sure that's such a good idea 
>>> since there's no way to embed such a claim in a mobileOK 
>>> representation, leading to a pretty confusing message "Use RDFa to 
>>> claim you're mobileOK, but not in a mobileOK page. What ?!?". ]
>>>
>>> Did I miss something?
>>>
>>> Francois.
>>>
>>>
>>> Phil Archer wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Whilst I understand that this draft reflects the resolutions taken 
>>>> at TPAC, I would like to propose an addition to the document that at 
>>>> least points to the option to make the mobileOK claim 
>>>> machine-readable as follows.
>>>>
>>>> 2. Further Steps
>>>> As the previous section makes clear, the mobileOK trustmark is an 
>>>> icon that may be included on any Web page that conforms to mobileOK 
>>>> Basic Tests. However, it is possible to go further and make the 
>>>> claim machine-readable using any of a number of different methods, 
>>>> thus making mobileOK content more readily discoverable. The Protocol 
>>>> for Web Description Resources [@@POWDER] includes an example of how 
>>>> to do this in its documentation and alternatives include RDFa and 
>>>> microformats (@@ link to Jonathan’s work on this)
>>>>
>>>> Link to http://www.w3.org/TR/powder-dr/#evidence (this is due to be 
>>>> updated w/c 10 November, see it now at 
>>>> http://philarcher.org/powder/20081104.html#evidence
>>>>
>>>> WDYT?
>>>>
>>>> Phil.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Jo Rabin wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Hi folks, I have updated the Editor's draft of mobileOK scheme [1] 
>>>>> in line with the resolutions taken at the F2F. I did not put 
>>>>> anything in the document about sticking a date in the ALT test for 
>>>>> the trustmark as I don't recall that actually being a resolution. 
>>>>> And anyway, I don't understand what that is supposed to represent, 
>>>>> how you'd encode it and why it would be useful, what effect it 
>>>>> would have on the correct use of ALT and so on.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'd like to close out on this by the time mobileOK Basic Tests goes 
>>>>> to Rec (early Dec). A couple of  further things need sorting out on 
>>>>> this:
>>>>>
>>>>> a) ACTION-869 - Review the mobileOK license in more details and 
>>>>> send further questions to rigo [on Jo Rabin - due 2008-10-27]
>>>>>
>>>>> b) RESOLUTION: Dom, Jo and Rigo to form a subcommittee to come back 
>>>>> with a final proposal to the group within 4 weeks following on from 
>>>>> Rigo's current proposal.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm attending to these now. Meanwhile would appreciate comments on 
>>>>> the latest draft.
>>>>>
>>>>> thanks
>>>>> Jo
>>>>>
>>>>> [1] 
>>>>> http://www.w3.org/2005/MWI/BPWG/Group/Drafts/mobileOK-Trustmark/20081106 
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>
>

Received on Friday, 7 November 2008 11:28:09 UTC