Re: Who is the Intended Audience of the Markup Spec Proposal?

Maciej Stachowiak <mjs@apple.com>, 2009-01-29 20:37 -0800:
>  On Jan 29, 2009, at 8:30 PM, Michael(tm) Smith wrote:
> > "Michael(tm) Smith" <mike@w3.org>, 2009-01-30 12:16 +0900:
> >
> >> Lachlan Hunt <lachlan.hunt@lachy.id.au>, 2009-01-30 00:46 +0100:
> >>>  I suggest that it be revised again to the following:
> >>>
> >>>   "This specification is intended as an adjunct to HTML 5 for HTML
> >>>    producers and other individuals wishing to establish conformance of
> >>>    HTML markup with respect to the requirements described in HTML 5."
> >>
> >> I'm not going to add a statement that explicitly describes the
> >> document as an "adjunct to HTML 5".
> >
> > Let me restate that: I'm not inclined to add such a statement at
> > this point because I don't believe it's necessary. If you feel
> > strongly about it, you could raise it as an issue and I will abide
> > by whatever resolution comes out from discussion of that issue.
> > However, I'd hope you'd think very carefully before doing that. It
> > doesn't seem to me at least that further dragging out of
> > discussion of the audience description at this point is a very
> > productive use of my time or yours or the group's.
> 
>  Honestly, this last interchange increases my concern about the risks of 
>  dueling specs with competing agendas.

Apologies for the tone of my remarks. I got a bit exasperated and
testy about the nature of the audience discussion -- but that's not
an excuse for letting myself slip into behaving like a butthead.

I don't want to discourage further discussion about the audience
section, and I do believe that if we are going to have an explicit
description in the document, it should actually be something that
we can agree is generally useful. So I hope we can get it there
eventually. In the mean time, I would also hope that discussion
wouldn't block anybody from taking an opportunity to provide
specific comments and suggestions for improvement about other
parts of the draft (along the lines of the ones Hixie took the
time to send and that I replied to today).

And to be clear, it's also not my intent to get us mired into a
state of dueling specs and competing agendas -- and I at least
that's where were at, nor where we'll end up. There are a range of
agendas that people in this group -- and outside the group -- have
around exactly what kind of spec(s) we as a group need to be
producing. (Though I would personally prefer to call those
"viewpoints" or "positions" rather than "agendas".) My draft is my
attempt to produce something concrete that tries to be what some
people (both inside and outside of the group) have said is a part
of what they think we need to produce, and to have the group and
public review it and see if it actually meets that need -- or even
if it's viable/possible to met the need at all.

Also, among the responsibilities I committed to by agreeing to be
a team contact for the group was to try to represent in this group
not just my own views and the positions I personally agree with
completely, but also to attempt in good faith to represent the
views of others on the W3C Team. I don't think it should come as a
surprise to you or anybody else that there are a range of
viewpoints among the W3C Team about what kind of spec(s) this
group should be producing. This draft in part is an attempt to
also represent some of those viewpoints.

And that said, it's not just people on the W3C Team who have
expressed a viewpoint that we need to produce something like this
draft. Although it's not my explicit responsibility to try to
represent views of anyone else outside the W3C Team, I do feel an
obligation to try do so to the degree that I can practically.

I think there are some people who have stayed away from getting
involved productively in discussions in this group -- or about
HTML5 at all -- because they are not happy with the limits or
scope that we have thus far mostly confined our work too. I
personally think we as a group could benefit from having a broader
range of viewpoints directly represented in the group, and I would
hope that this draft might help to bring in some more people who
have thus far stayed away and been unhappy about the direction of
the work, and get them directly engaged with all of us -- instead
of continuing to remain away and unengaged and unhappy (or worse
yet, publicly commenting in very negative ways about "what a mess
the HTML WG is", "HTML5 is hopeless waste of time", etc.)

  --Mike

-- 
Michael(tm) Smith
http://people.w3.org/mike/

Received on Friday, 30 January 2009 08:00:09 UTC