Re: References Re: What are the requirements/problems? Re: Working on New Styles for W3C Specifications

On Tuesday, December 13, 2011 at 7:08 AM, "Martin J. Dürst" wrote:

> On 2011/12/13 2:12, Marcos Caceres wrote:
>  
> > I agree, particularly with everything Julian said in responding to this thread. I think the right thing to do is to do both: include references separated by normative and informative, but I still don't see any use case for including the author, date, or organization that produced the document.
>  
> Well, re. organization, I want to know whether it's from the W3C, IETF,  
> ISO, IEEE, or any of the many other organizations out there. Don't you?

Personally, I don't have a use case for that information (and I don't see what value it adds in real terms). What's the use case for knowing that information? What are you going to do with it? How will it influence your reading? Can't you get that information just by clicking or hovering over the hyperlink? Is it not evident in most cases?   

> Re. date, I want to know when this was done. It helps understand whether  
> this may be established technology or brand new, whether I have the  
> right version, and so on.

Can you explain how the date helps you work out if it is an established technology. For example, Xlink went Rec in 2001, but it's by no means an "established technology" (assuming an established technology is something widely used).  
  
>  
> Re. authors/editors, I want to know who did all the hard work to write  
> the document. I want to see the people behind the specs.

Again, what is the use case? What do you do once you have that information, and why can't you get that information from the reference document itself? The authoritative document is one click away (with the up-to-date names of the people that worked on it).   
> And these informations are just standard in references of all shapes and  
> forms, and it would be very confusing to leave them out.
>  

In what manner would it be confusing. Would it not be more confusing to have incorrect information. You are assuming that the references are always correct, when in the most part their are out of date. The authoritative source is always the referenced document. Replicating data (manually in most cases) seems like a really bad idea and a much greater source for confusion.   

--  
Marcos Caceres

Received on Tuesday, 13 December 2011 10:52:29 UTC