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

On Jan 30, 2009, at 09:59, Michael(tm) Smith wrote:

> 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.

Thank you for sharing this with the WG. (Others in the WG may also be  
interested in the IRC discussion from yesterday logged at: http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/html-wg/20090129#l-116 
  )

It bothers me that it wasn't stated up front that private feedback in  
general and from the W3C Team in particular was a major motivating  
factor behind "HTML 5: The Markup Language". (Or if this has been  
stated before, I haven't properly noticed it.)

The HTML5 effort has been criticized for Hixie taking private feedback  
into account in his editing of "HTML 5". However, Hixie has at least  
readily disclosed that private feedback has motivated notable editing  
choices.

Given the recent suggestion that the WG needs some ground rules for  
taking on new drafts, I'd like to suggest that one of the ground rules  
be that editors disclose to the WG when a draft or a section of a  
draft comes into existence in response to private feedback the whole  
group isn't seeing. (Of course, I'd prefer even more openness.)

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen@iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/

Received on Friday, 30 January 2009 17:14:40 UTC