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I suggest in bug #10920 to remove this text entirely. However, if it is to stay, normative keywords MUST be used within this section. For example, these first two sentences are ambiguous: "Extensions to the predefined set of metadata names may be registered in the WHATWG Wiki MetaExtensions page. [WHATWGWIKI] "Anyone is free to edit the WHATWG Wiki MetaExtensions page at any time to add a type. These new names must be specified with the following information:" Metadata names may or MAY be registered? What does "anybody is free" mean in a specification? The new names must or MUST be specified? And why does the HTML5 specification bother to specify what people write in a wiki elsewhere?
<http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/infrastructure.html#conformance-requirements> > For readability, these words do not appear in all uppercase > letters in this specification.
(In reply to comment #1) > <http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/infrastructure.html#conformance-requirements> > > > For readability, these words do not appear in all uppercase > > letters in this specification. OK, thanks for the link. Reopening the bug: "Anyone is free" should be "Anyone may" then. Although I still don't understand why a W3C spec should regulate what people do in a wiki.
(In reply to comment #2) > Reopening the bug: "Anyone is free" should be "Anyone may" then. Although I > still don't understand why a W3C spec should regulate what people do in a wiki. RFC 2119 keywords are for conformance requirements, not for developer instructions. That being said, I agree with the second sentence :-)
(In reply to comment #3) > (In reply to comment #2) > > Reopening the bug: "Anyone is free" should be "Anyone may" then. Although I > > still don't understand why a W3C spec should regulate what people do in a wiki. > > That being said, I agree with the second sentence :-) And please keep that argument in its own bug.
EDITOR'S RESPONSE: This is an Editor's Response to your comment. If you are satisfied with this response, please change the state of this bug to CLOSED. If you have additional information and would like the editor to reconsider, please reopen this bug. If you would like to escalate the issue to the full HTML Working Group, please add the TrackerRequest keyword to this bug, and suggest title and text for the tracker issue; or you may create a tracker issue yourself, if you are able to do so. For more details, see this document: http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/decision-policy.html Status: Rejected Change Description: no spec change Rationale: The "Anyone is free" line is not a "may" because it would be redundant with the earlier "may". The spec is usually very careful about not having any requirement stated in two different ways, because when that is done, it becomes unclear if the intent is to allow it once, allow it in two different ways, or to allow it to be done twice. To put it another way: What would be allowed if the "anyone is free" line were made into a "may" that is not already allowed? The "anyone is free" line is just non-normative fluffy descriptive text.