Re: Working Group Decision on ISSUE-91: Removing the aside Element

Sam Ruby wrote:
> On 06/01/2010 06:45 PM, Shelley Powers wrote:
>>
>> Neither of the decisions addresses the other HTML audiences, such as web
>> developers, designers, tech writers, tool builders, and so on.
>
> I personally spent considerable time scanning the web to see if I 
> could substantiate the claims that these elements were too complex for 
> these audiences.  What I found instead was plenty of instances where 
> people were welcoming these changes, often eagerly.

Most of the writings were either by folks representing one of the 
browser companies, or sites that jump up and down for anything that's 
remotely "HTML5" -- because it's so uber cool.

The real point is: who asked for these elements either in the WhatWG 
group, or in the W3C? That's where you should have looked, Sam. What 
were the requirements for these elements? That's what I tried to 
demonstrate in my change proposal. Which, from your recent decision, was 
completely ignored, since you only addressed the objections to the 
counter-proposal, not the change proposal itself. Unless you think 
Henri's one line was sufficient to disregard what I wrote.

People have also written positively about datagrid, and it's not in 
HTML5. People have also written positively about HTML5's geolocation -- 
which just goes to show how random Google searches should never be 
introduced as some form of justification.

It is not the co-chairs responsibility to provide the proofs, only judge 
based on the merits of the arguments provided. And a Google search link 
is poor proof.

You should addressed the proposals and the written objections. That you 
did not, that you only addressed the objections, demonstrates you all 
had made your decisions before the survey and were just going through 
the motions.


>
> As an aside, I personally find claims made by a party that these 
> elements may be too complex for a third party to be weaker than claims 
> made by the persons affected.  If such people were to step forward and 
> detail actual impact that affects them personally then that could very 
> well be treated as new information.
>

As I wrote, the concepts are based on the print world, and I made the 
argument that this doesn't translate well to the web world. For 
instance, how to you "tangentially" relate a figure or aside to the web 
content? Just using the aside element? You can, in the print world. You 
can't in the web world. But you didn't address this because it was in 
the change proposal -- which evidently, you didn't read. Or at least 
didn't feel was worth addressing directly.

Something for people to keep in mind, now -- the chairs don't judge 
based on the proposals or counter-proposals, only the objections raised 
in the surveys for both. I don't believe this was clearly stated in the 
decision process.
>> It shows that the decisions were made even before the survey, and the
>> co-chairs picked among the arguments, as justification.
>
> That certainly was not the case for me, nor do I believe it to be the 
> case for the other co-chairs.  In any case, if anybody believes that 
> to be true then such a claim would be a valid basis for an appeal:
>
> http://www.w3.org/2005/10/Process-20051014/policies.html#WGAp
Shelley

Received on Wednesday, 2 June 2010 00:04:21 UTC