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

A couple of "IMO" thoughts:

1. mobileOK Scheme is to be published as a Working Group Note, so for 
once I would not worry too much about making a reference to a not fully 
existing POWDER spec.


2. The license draft specifies the conditions that must be met to be 
allowed to use the trademarked "mobileOK®" string and the trademarked 
mobileOK logo to claim conformance to mobileOK. The claim could be made 
on paper, on a bus, on some other page, whatever. There may be other 
claims that don't make use of this trademarked material.

In particular, there is no trademark on the machine-readable claim, I 
don't think there can be one, and I don't think that's necessary to be 
able to go after someone mis-using the 
"http://www.w3.org/2008/06/mobileOK#conformant" URI. But a legal view on 
that could be helpful.


3. About using the "mobileOK®" string, I don't think it is required that 
we define it in the mobileOK Scheme document, but equally agree that it 
looks odd that all possibilities mentioned in the license do not show up 
in the mobileOK Scheme doc.


4. About telling whether this will be used by anyone, I agree with Phil. 
There were some use cases listed in previous drafts. Whether any of them 
will actually be put into practice is difficult to say. It could be 
useful, which is what I think is important. I'd say we should stay 
silent on this and focus on defining ways to claim mobileOK conformance. 
It could have a direct use in the Content Transformation Guidelines. 
Plus people tend to enjoy saying they conform to this and that, so we'd 
better specify means to make this possible.


5. about wrapping the mobileOK claim into something of more general 
utility, I understand it as referring to the "aspirational" level we've 
been talking about. I don't remember: did we ever resolve to drop it? I 
think it's, in any case, something that is distinct from the "real" 
mobileOK claim, and that it would need a different logo, string, and/or 
machine-readable assertion.


In short, I second Phil's proposal: i.e. the same document as the latest 
one completed with the previous sections 2.1, 2.2, 2.4 for the RDF 
vocabulary class and POWDER reference.

Francois.


Jo Rabin wrote:
> 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 17:46:41 UTC