Fwd: [sharpic/rdwg-note] Referencing (issue #17)

New issue 17: Referencing
https://bitbucket.org/sharpic/rdwg-note/issue/17/referencing

Simon Harper:

I read through <http://www.w3.org/2001/06/manual/#References>. It is
designed primarily for references to W3C specs, where the reference text
is usually the spec shortname, e.g., [XML1]. The references listing has
the document title first, rather than the authors. That makes sense for
TR specs, but is not in synch with common research references.

Because we want the RDWG Research Reports to appeal to researchers I
strongly suggest that we request of Comm permission to use standard
Harvard/parenthetical referencing[1] for these reports. I'm pretty sure
that Comm would be fine with that.

more:
- I think it's fairly important to use the author name and date, as
opposed to trying to create a useful shortname (for the brackets) from
the publication title. Indeed, the metrics report draft has something
more like that - listing the author names first, not titles. It
currently uses a hybrid, though, for the shortnames, which I think just
makes it harder to read and disconnected from typical research referencing.
- I think it'd be fine to use brackets instead of parenthesis, *if*
people felt that would be important to be a little more in synch with
W3C style.
- A more minor point, I would prefer if we styled these reference links
to be less visually distracting than the default bright blue &
underlined. See, e.g., how they really jump out in the middle paragraph
of <http://www.w3.org/TR/accessibility-metrics-report/#validity>.
Instead, we could style these something more like the definition links
in WCAG20 (black text, light underline (I think solid would be less
distracting than dotted), with highlight on hover/focus).

Feel free to forward my comments to Simon &/or RDWG list &/or Comm &/or
whomever

Best,
~Shawn


Responsible: sharpic
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Received on Thursday, 17 January 2013 16:46:30 UTC