- From: Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>
- Date: Sun, 02 Aug 2009 05:43:40 -0700
- To: Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>
- Cc: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>, Sam Ruby <rubys@intertwingly.net>, John Foliot <jfoliot@stanford.edu>, 'HTML WG' <public-html@w3.org>
On Aug 1, 2009, at 11:47 PM, Julian Reschke wrote: > Ian Hickson wrote: >> ... >>> Your sampling is flawed because it doesn't account for a >>> significant number of web pages that are not accessible to the >>> public. >> Pages that are not part of the Web do not need to use a standard >> interoperable across the entire Web, they can use proprietary >> formats. > > ... > > Sorry? I think this is something we need to discuss. Just because a > web-based application only runs on an intranet doesn't mean it's > irrelevant. It just means it is harder to collect data about it. I don't think intranets are irrelevant, but they do raise an epistemological problem. People often claim that intranets have content with substantially different characteristics than the public Web, in particular respects. But in practice it is usually impossible to test this kind of hypothesis. That means these kinds of claims are not falsifiable and therefore not scientific. So we have three basic options: (1) ignore all data and make decisions purely based on armchair reasoning; or (2) by Occam's Razor, assume intranet content is much like public Web content unless specifically shown otherwise with concrete evidence; (3) ignore intranet content except when we can gather concrete data about its unique characteristics or special needs. I don't think #1 is the most rational of these choices. Regards, Maciej
Received on Sunday, 2 August 2009 12:44:23 UTC