Re: [Moderator Action] Re: [Moderator Action] Re: CfC: Close ISSUE-206: meta-generator by Amicable Resolution

Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi>, 2012-08-02 09:30 +0000:

> On Thu, Aug 2, 2012 at 11:49 AM, Michael[tm] Smith <mike@w3.org> wrote:
> > Again, I wonder if instead what those tool developers are really wanting to
> > silence is the case where dozens or hundreds of error messages are emitted,
> > but yeah OK, understood.
> 
> I believe the key thing is whether the markup generator developer
> thinks that the validator output reflects badly on the quality of the
> generator in the eyes of ill-informed people who use validation as a
> quick smoketest of generator quality.

I really don't think the subtle highlighting thing would cause the
tool-generator developers to think the validator output reflects badly on
their tools in the eyes of anybody.

I think we also need a way to give the validator user some signal that
there's something here they might want to explore further, and it's hard
for me to think of any less threatening-to-tool-generator-developers  way
to inform the validator user for this case.

> I expect any suggestion that the
> output of the generator is "incomplete" to trigger the worry that the
> validator output reflects badly on the quality of the generator in the
> eyes of ill-informed people who use validation is a quick smoketest to
> such a degree that some markup generator developers want to make said
> validator output go away.

I think we have hope to come up with an indicator that does not trigger
that worry. But I'm not a UI designer. Maybe somebody who is could give
better suggestions.

But for now, I have one further refinement to my proposal that I'd like to
ask you to seriously consider: Instead of fading the background color of
that option *in*, we fade it *out* instead?

That is, when the post-validation page is first rendered, that option is
immediately shown with a highlighted background. But it then fades out,
over whatever short period of time.

If we do it that way, the only indicator of the said validator output you
mention quite literally does go away -- on its own -- and that part of the
UI goes back to just as the user would have seen them if there had been no
errors detected.

> It's hard to tell if there is a way of having the cake and eating it
> too here. Any suggestion that there's something wrong with the page
> can trigger the behavior in markup generator developers that causes
> them to change the output of the generator such that the suggestion
> that there's something wrong with the page is removed from the default
> validator output. It might be possible to construct some sort of
> "maybe you want to retry with image report enabled" mention in the
> validator output so mildly that it doesn't trigger the market
> generator developer behavior that tends proposal is trying to avoid
> triggering, but it's really hard to guess if there's a level of
> mildness (apart from total silence) that doesn't trigger the behavior.

I think what I've described above is very mild. It's hard for me to imagine
any way to make it more mild. And I think it's unlikely to trigger the
generator-tool-developer behavior you've described. 

  --Mike

-- 
Michael[tm] Smith http://people.w3.org/mike

Received on Thursday, 2 August 2012 09:55:03 UTC