Re: Sending Docs to Rec?

Harry,

I have to disagree with some of your premises and your conclusion.

First, the unspoken and unwritten premise seems to be that a WD or NOTE
is virtually invisible and unusable by the constituency who need the 
information.
I disagree strongly. The microformats community has demonstrated aptly and 
amply
that they do not need the comfort of a W3C REC to get their jobs done.

An argument was uttered today suggesting that people would not be able
to locate the Primer or Use Cases document by following links from the
Introduction to the GRDDL Specification -- poppycock!

Secondly, Harry refers to an email in which the author suggests that the 
writing
in the Primer needs work:
         If this: [excerpt from Primer Introduction]
         is the introduction to the primer, then I think some work on 
re-writing
         in plain language is called for.

I would have thought that this was an argument in favor of re-working the 
Primer.
I note especially that the Introduction in particular is called into question,
and observe that this is the same introduction that I previously suggested
needed rewording. I withdrew my request for a cross-set introduction
so that we could move forward and Harry would have less issues to track.
I don't think that moving to REC will solve those problems. And more to the
point, the email in question does not impugn the GRDDL Specification at all.

Finally, I do not feel that we as a WG, or I as a member of the WG, have 
exercised
an adequate level of scrutiny, due consideration or input to either document.

My attempts to make useful comments on these documents were abandoned
because I ran into stone walls. My efforts on the GRDDL Spec were well received
and my comments were often incorporated. I cannot say the same of the other 
documents.
No offence intended to the authors of those documents. I just couldn't get 
the kind
of traction with you as I did with Dan. So, I re-focused my efforts on the 
GRDDL WD.

I do think that it is more important to have a solid specification, and 
tests by
which to verify conformity to that specification, than it is to take the 
current Primer
or Use Cases WDs to REC status. I do not feel compelled by Harry's argument to
the contrary.

Bottom line, Harry: I don't share your urgency in this matter and am not 
motivated
by your assertions. It seems apparent that there are other factors involved 
which
may be driving you toward pushing these documents to REC status. Your stated
reasoning does not satisfy me, and I am afraid that we would all regret a 
reckless
decision to push these documents toward REC in spite of strong resistance.

I would be happy to be part of a process that led these documents to REC in 
time,
especially if the test cases were to take priority within the WG.

Regards,

Murray

At 03:44 PM 2/21/2007 -0500, Harry Halpin wrote:

>During the telecon today, there was a definite feeling that only the
>GRDDL spec itself should go Rec track. The reason was given was resources.
>
>However, without the chair's hat on, I do think it would, if we have the
>resources, we should send  docs besides the  Spec doc, and I'd like
>others who have significant connections to non-W3C communities.
>
>Primarily because they serve different audience: the primer clearly
>serves people who aren't implementing GRDDL clients, but people who just
>want to GRDDL-enable their web-pages or, say, microformats or XML
>dialects. To me, this is actually a much *larger* audience than those
>who will implement GRDDL-aware clients. Also, the writing should be less
>technical and more easy-to-read, see
>complaints about readability already from the microformat-community [1].
>
>Furthermore, a lot of people who we want interested in GRDDL won't even
>be editing HTML or XML themselves. Instead, these people will be
>administrators and CTOs who will just want to know on a high-level how
>GRDDL benefits them and whether or not they should tell their staff to
>"GRDDL-enable" their web-pages. Again, this a *different* audience than
>that which reads the Primer and the Spec, and arguably an important one.
>
>So, we should if at all possible take the GRDDL Primer to Rec track,
>since that signals to both adminstrators and your desperate HTML hacker
>on the street that we care about them, and take their concerns seriously.
>
>If all we produce is a technically sound implementation spec with test
>cases, then we'll get GRDDL-aware agents implementations in all major
>RDF products, but we might not get the possibility of massive uptake
>that I think makes GRDDL crucial to actually deploying the Semantic Web.
>
>So, since I think the Primer and Use-Case scenario documents are
>relatively stable and unlikely to be controversial, the benefits of
>putting them through Rec track outweighs the cost. While it appears
>Fabien has returned, I do think it would be good if the Primer could
>have another editor (I seem to be the defacto editor if IanD isn't
>around, since he's often busy actually deploying RDF with Talis).
>
>I  think the test-cases will be more expensive, and needs someone taking
>primary responsibility for taking care of them as an editor, and would
>be happy to send them through Rec track if a single editor besides Dan
>could take responsibility for them.
>
>And assuming we get to a relatively non-controversial Last Call and most
>comments are of the "Good job!" flavor, we really need to devote more
>time to deploying GRDDL, especially among the microformat community and
>with large and well-deployed XML dialects. But, a good solid spec comes
>first!
>
>
>[1]http://microformats.org/discuss/mail/microformats-discuss/2006-October/006190.html
>
>--
>                 -harry
>
>Harry Halpin,  University of Edinburgh
>http://www.ibiblio.org/hhalpin 6B522426

Received on Wednesday, 21 February 2007 21:53:03 UTC