Re: Publishing a new draft (HTML5+RDFa)

Ben Adida wrote:
> I think if you ask web developers, they will assume that the content of
> a published working draft represents a pretty good snapshot in time of
> current consensus within the working group, unless an area of the text
> is specifically called out as being experimental and not having
> consensus. Certainly, that is how other W3C specs are interpreted.
> That's why I think publishing only Ian's draft is a mistake.

Spot on. I'm web developing, and I agree whole-heartedly. In fact, the
reason I've found my way to this w3c mailing list for the first time
--after 13 years writing html and css-- is that I've become confused
by the publication of the August 18th Microdata in HTML5 spec: I did
indeed, in years past, assume that a W3C spec -- even a working draft
-- was a consensus statement. Yet this one is so much a departure from
what I expected (given that RDFa seems to work, and others are
adopting it), that I delved further, like a dwarf in Moria, and turned
up masses of non-consensus-like statements around the issue; yet still
the spec went ahead. Hence the confusion. I think it's a bad
precedent; and should be revoked, until such time as a consensus
document can be produced. If RDFa can work in HTML (after much hard
work, evidently), then spend as much time as necessary to get it
working. If it can't, and microdata is indeed the better solution,
again, spend as much time as necessary to get the consensus; to show
to everyone in the group that this step is necessary. But to have
competing specs published (and without warning that this is going to
happen) -- well, the urban legends are already sprouting that 'there's
one person in control'. That of course shouldn't happen (and shouldn't
even seem to be happening, for the general trust of the web).

Steven R.

[p.s. apology if this message turns up twice. The first attempt didn't 
show up on the list after >24hours, even though I complied with your 
'permission' software and was approved. I'm not sure where it went 
after that.]

Received on Thursday, 20 August 2009 15:28:08 UTC