Re: ISSUE-76: Need feedback on splitting Microdata into separate specification

On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 9:39 AM, Shelley Powers
<shelleyp@burningbird.net> wrote:
> To this point, those of us who have lobbied for certain aspects of change to
> HML5 have had to run further, prove more, ask harder, fight more, provide
> better arguments, provide better examples, etc, just because one person is
> the sole author of the HTML5 specification, and just because a small group
> of browser vendors and their IRC buds, have an inordinate influence on the
> future of HTML5.
>
> Yes, inordinate. HTML5 isn't just for browser developers, or a few folks who
> go crazy over all the Ajaxy stuff HTML5 can do. HTML5 also has to be for web
> developers, designers, people concerned about accessibility, people needing
> accessibility, other tool builders, library creators, CMS creators, folks
> interested in semantics, folks not interested in semantics, and the simple
> Jane and Joe just creating simple web pages. Frankly, there is a lack of
> diversity when it comes to HTML5.

The same argument can be made against essentially any power structure.
 You can't give any individual or group extra power without denying
everyone an equal voice, and you can't give everyone equal power
without causing minorities to get steamrollered.  Thankfully, in the
standards world this is a less formidable problem than in actual
government, because dissenters always have the ability to make their
own competing standards.

Which, hey, is how HTML5 started.  A few years ago the ones in charge
of HTML's future were all in favor of things like XML namespaces and
RDF.  Some other people thought they could do a better job, gave it a
shot, and ended up winning.  So it goes.  If RDFa is clearly better
than Microdata, the way HTML5 was clearly better than XHTML2, then the
worst case for you is that Microdata gets ignored and taken out of the
spec eventually when there aren't enough implementations.  If being in
the spec is all that's needed to let Microdata win, I guess it can't
have been too much worse to start with.

Anyway, obviously some people aren't going to agree on this no matter
what.  Since neither side is willing to compromise enough to satisfy
the other, both sides are putting themselves at risk of losing
entirely.  And the winner will be decided by some group of people
(vote/chairs/etc.) who at least one party will deem biased.  But
that's unavoidable, so let's just be done with it, IMO.  Write up a
change proposal, let someone object, follow all the little arrows and
let the chairs figure out how to deal with it.  Then accept whatever
the result is and move on.

Received on Thursday, 15 October 2009 17:09:40 UTC