Re: Report on testing of the link relations registry

On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 4:39 PM, Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>wrote:

> On 17.08.2010 01:25, Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:
>
>> Eventually all registries held by a standards organisation go the same
>> way and become bureaucratic and difficult to use, because that is a way
>> to protect against spam registrations (and other annoying stuff). I
>> believe if we set up another registry, we will eventually run into the
>> same problems - not to speak of potential conflict with the existing
>> IANA registry. So, what is the next generation of Web standards
>> developers to do? Create a Google wave based registry on top of the then
>> existing two registries? (yes, I know, Google wave is dead - I'm just
>> using it as a placeholder for the "next big technology for document
>> authoring on the Internet").
>>
>> Isn't there a better way where we can help IANA fix their registry to do
>> what we need it to achieve? Isn't this what harmonisation between
>> standards bodies is all about? Also, I'm not suggesting that Ian should
>> do this - in fact, I think this is totally the job of somebody in a
>> different position to an editor in the W3C. It's good to know where it's
>> up - but I think now it's time to plan with IANA a new process that
>> allows us all to move into the future.
>>
>
> Silvia,
>
> out of curiosity: as somebody not involved in the last 4 weeks of
> discussion what's your opinion about whether there's something wrong with
> the registry? (considering it was just created, so we don't have any
> additional data than these attempts yet)
>
> Best regards, Julian
>


Indeed I am looking at this as a curious onlooker, so might not have all the
information, apologies if I am jumping to conclusions.

Actually, I was not aware that the IANA registry was only just now created,
but assumed it had existed for a while. Seeing as it's new, it should be
even easier to fix it with some cooperation from both sides.

The problems that I can see - from my limited reading of just this thread:

* If the registry does not solve the problems that the people have that want
to register a new link relation, then it's not appropriate. What I read was
that only some of the link relations were acceptable for the current
registration process, others were rejected as not appropriate. I read that
some link relations were rejected because they are only appropriate for
HTML. That is not a good position to be in and not a forward-looking
position. If it is required to make notes on the link relations what
technologies they apply to, then that's a field that the registry needs to
add.

* Also, I read that the registration process seemed to be non-obvious. An
online form where the respective fields that need to be provide are listed,
together with information boxes (e.g. to explain what type of specification
is required - would a wiki page somewhere suffice or is a W3C recommendation
or an RFC required). Incidentally. I've seen RFCs where a link to a wiki
page that was in control of a reliable organisation was acceptable.

Other than that I didn't really see too much of an issue. Anyone who's ever
registered an RFC or a new mime type knows that there are several hoops to
jump and that's just what it takes, as long as they are not impossible to
achieve.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Silvia.