A Red Herring I followed

Dear Bert and David,

I sent the message below to www-qa@w3.org by mistake from
pdfion@ionparticle.com, an email I don't want widely distributed.
So I was actually pleased when the spam system asked my confirmation
before distributing to the list.  I said DON'T.

However, I would like to send the message to someone appropriate
(and from my usual already public mail account, namely this one).
But I'm not sure that the message as below is suitable for
eternal public archiving.  So please, Bert, say what you think I
should do.  I could just forget the whole matter, as I do have
other pressing things to do.  But then so do you both, so I
apologize for bothering you.

All the best,

	Patrick


===== Aborted message to www-qa@w3.org  ======

Dear Whomever reads this mail, if anyone,

I noticed what I thought was an anomaly in the listings for MathML
in the QA matrix of specs, which seemed to be a W3C reference document,
at least on first exposure to it.  I brought this up with my WG
co-chair who pointed out the age of the page.  I checked further
and found as (included) below in my reply to his message.

I do think this could be a problem for the W3C thatit is often none
too clear what is considered a current reference document.  I applaud
entirely keeping the earlier forms of documents readily accessible
on the W3C site, and believe that this has encouraged better development
over the years.  But I fear it may be a problem that older, possibly
superseded and probably no longer maintained pages, are not readily
detectable by some clear marking, at least on the W3C site.

We, of the Math WG, would prefer people use MathML 3.0, but think
MathML 2.0 should be available for perusal, and to document
what an older MathML 2.0-compliant system is (supposed to be) doing.
But our specs are written so as to make clear that evolution's
going on.  More general, W3C-wide documents are not so clearly
labeled, it seems to me, as to what their current statuses are:
e.g., current or archive, say.

I append the message that shows my evolving understanding of the
status of the spec matrix, so others may understand that my
progress was maybe reasonable, but should probably have been unnecessary.

All the best,

	Patrick

        Patrick Ion, W3C Math WG Co-chair

=======  Message replied David Carlisle and Math WG ====

On 3/14/13 8:51 AM, David Carlisle wrote:
>
> Yes, I suppose you should report it although it says
>
> This version of the Matrix has been produced at this $Date: 2011/01/03
15:49:55 $.
>
> so it's 2 years old, is it still being maintained at all or is it an
orphaned file?
>
> David
Well, yes, the question of upkeep had occurred to me, although I arrived
there as an ordinary inquiring person might after seeing the Doctorow
piece on TBL and DRM
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2013/mar/12/tim-berners-lee-drm-cory-doctorow?CMP=twt_fd

This matrix is mentioned as a reference document on the
Quality Assurance Home Page

http://www.w3.org/QA/Library/

but then that seems to date from 2008 since the QA WG is
now closed (Aug 2005!):

http://www.w3.org/QA/WG/

though there was a follow-on QA IG which was also closed in 2007.

http://www.w3.org/QA/IG/

"The QA IG was the main body of the Quality Assurance activity at W3C."

So one conjectures the W3C is no longer into QA and that my whole
question is moot, and my attention to it was following a red herring.
That I could readily do this, is perhaps a problem for the W3C not just
for me.  I'll tell W3C QA if it still exists.

Patrick





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Received on Thursday, 14 March 2013 14:32:50 UTC