- From: Al Gilman <Alfred.S.Gilman@IEEE.org>
- Date: Mon, 23 May 2005 12:03:18 -0400
- To: www-qa@w3.org
At 9:34 AM +0200 5/23/05, Dominique Hazaël-Massieux wrote: >Hi, > >The minutes of the meeting the QA WG held on May 16 are available at: >http://www.w3.org/2005/05/16-qa-minutes.html > >The main topics of discussions where the resolution to request the >transition of SpecGL to Proposed Recommendation, Which was resolved in the affirmative. http://www.w3.org/2005/05/16-qa-irc#T15-13-33 Despite the outstanding issue "Formal vs prose language normativity" .. for which the QA Working Group has failed to do due diligence to resolve the issue. That is to say a phalanx of consistent comment from customers has been ignored, and the Working Group has left an ill-considered requirement in the document. That by itself should make the Director "just Say No" to a PR request at this time. This is not executing the W3C Process with acceptable quality. Trying to make specifications repair their own errors by requiring a tie-breaker rule is futile. They can't. It is not going to work. Thus doesn't assure the quality of the Web. When a specification is found to contain an internal inconsistency after it is developed, published, and implemented, one can't just look inside the specification for how to resolve the error. It is a failure in encapsulation, of separation of concerns. To decide the appropriate action to take, one has to consider a wider horizon than just the specified technology and its governing document. One has to look outside to the load, the actual traffic, that the services following this specification are carrying in the operational configuration of the Web. Consider the actual cost of miscommunication (because of disparate interpretations of the specification) with the actual cost of mis-features (because the tie-breaker imposes an inferior design). When theory fails, we have to get pragmatic. To pretend otherwise discredits our effort. Asserting a precedence that the development group genuinely believes in is fine. Requiring a precedence in the absence of that collective opinion is counter-productive. W3C, whose line of business depends on selling the value of open written specifications, must be modest as to our claims for what this accomplishes. Spurious claims, given the self-proclaimed monopoly position of the W3C in discerning the common good, will be magnified in the perception of our customers. Every futile provision we leave in this document detracts from the traction the W3C holds with Web implementers. Don't go there. Al
Received on Monday, 23 May 2005 16:03:32 UTC