ISSUE-20

Make it clearer what skill level the best practices are aimed at

State:

CLOSED

Product:

Best Practices Document

Raised by:

Jo Rabin

Opened on:

2005-10-04

Description:

I think we need some text discussing what author skill level we are aiming the
document at.

We have not decided whether we are directing the guidelines at beginners or
experts or both or something in between.

On the one hand we have points of principle, like “don’t waste the users
bandwidth� and on the other hand we have specific instructions about reducing
page weight. We can all argue about the specifics. However they if they are OK
in a tutorial sense to help readers understand the general points then they can
be treated as such. Tutorial points are rules that can and should be bent _once
you have learned the rules_

Compare teaching your children how to cross the road safely. The point of
principle is “take care when crossing the road, and make sure that there are no
cars comingâ€?. The tutorial point is “look right, then left, then right againâ€?.
The latter is instruction that  engenders the desired behavior of being careful.
The tutorial can, and indeed _must_ be ignored in lots of important cases. E.g.
when your children are visiting countries that drive on the right and not on the
left (which I’ve noticed they have started doing, since Napoleon).

If it is worth spelling this out in the document then I feel that it forestalls
potential criticism that we do not understand the complexities and that when we
give specific examples we are making certain assumptions, the advice is valid in
many cases, but must be ignored in other cases where the assumptions we are
working to do not apply (broken implementations etc).

Related Actions Items:

No related actions

Related emails:

1. [minutes] Summary of F2F meeting (from dom@w3.org on 2005-10-12)
2. ISSUE-20: Make it clearer what skill level the best practices are aimed at (from dean+cgi@w3.org on 2005-10-04)

Related notes:

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