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I propose we do the following: 1. Change the spec to allow the <meta> "name" attribute to have any arbitrary value that a Web author would like to use. 2. Remove any requirement on conformance checkers to check meta@name values. 3. Mark the WHATWG Wiki MetaExtensions page as obsolete (or whatever), as it will no longer be useful/needed if the spec allows arbitrary meta@name values. To be clear about what the context is here: The current spec says, "Conformance checkers must use the information given on the WHATWG Wiki MetaExtensions page to establish if a value is allowed or not: values defined in this specification or marked as "proposed" or "ratified" must be accepted, whereas values marked as "discontinued" or not listed in either this specification or on the aforementioned page must be rejected as invalid." Speaking from my perspective as a contributor to the development of a conformance checker: In practice, we receive a lot of comments and bug reports from confused/frustrated users who are trying to use values for meta@name that are not registered. And as far as the strategy of trying to use the spec and Wiki page as a means to educate them about trying to taking the time to register meta@name values and only use registered values and standard values (those listed in the spec), well, that strategy is not working well. They just want the validator to shut up. I don't think much real harm would be caused in practice if we dropped the requirement to only use standard/registered values and instead went back to allowing documents to contain arbitrary meta@name values. And again speaking specifically from my perspective a contributor to the development of a conformance checker, I think in practice more user time is wasted by the existence of the current spec prohibition on unregistered/non-standard meta@name values than would be wasted by allowing arbitrary values. And further (still speaking from my perspective as a contributor to the development of a conformance checker),
Please ignore the last (incomplete) sentence of my previous comment; it's just leftover cruft that I forgot to cut.
Mike, Some quick thoughts. * The specification could just indeed have a syntax requirement (it's already the case). * Remove the current conformance statement about values. "Meta name" is another extension point mechanism in HTML which maybe practical for some specific communities. Restraining the vocabularies will not achieve anything useful. * On the other hand, there is something useful about knowing the meaning of the values, but it might be entirely possible that it's not the domain of conformance checkers. What I would see that would be very helpful is in fact the restart of the Semantic Data Extractor as a more generic and flexible tool. http://www.w3.org/2003/12/semantic-extractor.html For the specific case of meta name values, the tool would extract the values and inform the user about their meaning. This to address those who are afraid of values used in an inappropriate way. It is a bit what redbot.org does for HTTP. It gives information on the headers and their meaning.
Since this was also posted to the WHATWG list, and this probably would benefit from wider review more than most things, I'll respond there and close the bug. Marking WONTFIX since it seems the least inaccurate of the options I have. :-)