Re: Report on testing of the link relations registry

On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 4:49 PM, David Singer <singer@apple.com> wrote:
> I think that formal registries and Wikis are both useful.
>
> Formal registries can have well-defined entry criteria, expert review, stability, references/owners/specifications, and so on (if they wish). They can be trusted, stable.  But the downside is that to gain that trust and stability they need those entry criteria and reviews.
>
> Wikis can be dynamic, open, up to date, and so on.  But the downside is that anyone can edit them, enter poorly-thought-out ideas, incorrect information, change existing state, and so on. To gain that dynamicity they lose trustability ("don't use Wikipedia as a primary reference" for example).

Thus Aryeh's suggestion of a split between the
active-and-open-for-edits page, and the curated "stable" page.  This
has the qualities you desire without the impedance from switching to
an entirely different organization and workflow for the "permanent"
version.


> But much of the criticism of the registries has been off the mark, I think.  Registries do what they are asked to do; some community decides what the entrance/review criteria area, what needs to be documented, and so on, and then the registry helps keep the resulting database and to apply the agreed rules.  I think that much of this discussion has the feel of setting up strawmen and then coming to conclusions based on those strawmen.

Right, registries are just fine.  The problem here is that the
suggested registry isn't producing good results, for various reasons.


> If the design of a registry is not appropriate for a community, then re-design it.

Exactly.


> I just want to avoid a situation in which people 'just know' that some random wiki pages are really considered definitive, some are helpful, some off the mark, and so on.  The spec. and the registry should reference each other, ideally, so we all know where we are.
>
> I have no problem with a spec. that says "experimental link relations are often documented on <wiki>, until they are stable enough and used enough to be considered fixed, when they move to <the formal registry>.", for example.
>
> So, let's decide what is needed in a registry, ("the specification of a link relation must say X, Y, Z or have a reference to a document where those are specified") and how we want to operate it, and I am sure we can arrive at a sensible result that will last.

Sure.

~TJ

Received on Friday, 3 September 2010 23:55:20 UTC