RE: Agenda

On the Author and user needs conflict issue...

When we originally discussed it, the example was distracting
advertising.  The author is intentionally changing the user's focus from
what the user considers to be the primary content (the news article) to
what the author considers to be the primary content (the ad).  From the
author's viewpoint, he has made his primary content (the ad) *MORE*
accessible with by adding dancing hamsters (or whatever). 

This is a real need for the author.  If he is not successful at this, he
won't get as many advertisers, or his advertisers won't pay as much, and
he'll go out of business, taking his secondary content (the news
article) with him.

The user probably won't see it this way, and will find that he has been
distracted from the primary content (the news article) by the secondary
content (the ad).


-----Original Message-----
From: Charles McCathieNevile [mailto:charles@w3.org] 
Sent: Thursday, October 04, 2001 8:30 AM
To: Jason White
Cc: Web Content Guidelines
Subject: Re: Agenda


Probable regrets. Here are my thoughts on the agenda items:

I only agree with R1 as long as R2 is also a matter for consensus.

N3 -  normative is determined by objectiveness  -- ease of establishing
consensus on fulfillment.

Seems to me too vaguely / briefly written. I understand it as meaning
that a requirement for being normative is that we can develop success
criteria where there is general agreement in the group on those
criteria, and (implicitly, but very significantly) on whether various
test cases pass or fail.  (I also see N3, N4 and N5 as essentially the
same thing, although I don't think that hurts. It means that if someone
else thinks we can have one but can not have another of them then there
isn't consensus on what they mean)

Big issues:

Author and user needs conflict, user and user needs conflict.

In general we need to ensure that user needs are met, and we need to
work as hard as we can to find ways of doing this that meet authors
needs. We need to understand whether author needs are needs
(communicating information) or desires (having a site use a particular
technology for demonstration, no matter what the consequences). If they
are desires, then it is acceptable that they lose in a conflict, but
where possible we should seek win-win solutions to the problems. In many
cases these exist.

User versus user needs is something we need to look at on a case by case
basis. But it is also a test we need to apply to every normative
requirement anyway - if this is done is some group being cut out?
(assuming that the rest of the requirements are applied makes this
easier, but makes conformance as opposed to simple reporting more
important)

Conformance:
I have not had time to follow the most recent thread, but I do have a
number of thoughts about conformance. Hopefully I will be able to follow
up in the next couple of days.

cheers

Charles

Received on Thursday, 4 October 2001 20:28:32 UTC