Review of the Reformatted Recommendations (was Re: New W3C Web Site Launched)

[Robin Berjon-4]

Hi all,

in the absence of a list specifically tailored for editors, I'd like  
to suggest that we can move this discussion to spec-prod@... which  
seems to be the closest logical location.

All but a few of the W3C Recommendations listed at:

   http://www.w3.org/TR/tr-status-stds.html

have been reformatted to match the look of the new site. In many cases  
this has broken them with various degrees of severity (in some cases  
rendering them largely unusable). Surely, users can go to the  
previously published version if they happen to need a functional  
document, but it's not something that they're likely to guess (unless  
they read the small note at the bottom of all those documents).

I don't think that I'm being particularly grouchy or demanding if I  
state that running live breaking experiments on documents that are  
expected to be stable and authoritative at their canonical URLs is a  
rather bad situation, that we should work together to address as  
quickly as possible.

I have already heard several people who had reviewed beta.w3.org being  
surprised at the changes made to the Recommendations. It seems rather  
clear to me that this part of the new site has not received anywhere  
near the amount of validation that it ought to have.

So in the spirit of reaching consensus that we are all familiar with,  
and in order to help the Team out as it pushes through this huge  
redesign effort that is in pretty much every other one of its aspects  
absolutely fantastic, to get all the editors past and present who are  
willing to help to discuss ways of addressing the current breakage  
swiftly. I would think that anyone would naturally be welcome to help,  
but I single out editors as they are after all those whose blood and  
tears and paper cuts from a thousand man-hours of last comments build  
these documents and donate them to W3C. They know the kinks and the  
warts, and they've generally had no other option but to listen to  
their users at great length.

Amongst the topics that I would like to see resolved as part of this  
discussion are:

   - Should this experimentation be performed on live Recommendations  
at their canonical URLs?
   - Should old documents be updated at all? If yes, should the WGs in  
charge handle them?
   - Do TRs need to have the site navigation included or are they  
standalone?
   - Is it okay to have the logos of commercial companies on TRs?
   - Should the SotD and paraphernalia be pushed to the end?

And of course any other concern that editors may bring up. Personally,  
I agree that the idea behind most of the changes has merit, but I  
believe that this is being rushed out unbaked, and that the quality of  
our production is taking a hit because of it.

WDYT?

--
Robin Berjon
   robineko — hired gun, higher standards
   http://robineko.com/

[noah_mendelsohn]

Robin Berjon writes:

> in the absence of a list specifically tailored for editors, I'd like
> to suggest that we can move this discussion to spec-prod@...

I have not strong feeling either way, since the key points have been here
in any case.  Please do keep in mind that spec-prod has a very different
readership than, e.g. chairs.  I can see why moving it off ac-members
makes sense, and indeed I don't believe I have posting permissions to that
one (so, this note probably won't get there).  Maybe we should, ahem,
cross post to chairs and spec-prod?  Usually, I don't like cross posting,
but I suspect that both communities are interested in this one.

Noah

--------------------------------------
Noah Mendelsohn
IBM Corporation
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
1-617-693-4036
--------------------------------------








Robin Berjon <robin@...>
Sent by: chairs-request@...
10/15/2009 10:32 AM
 
        To:     Christopher B Ferris <chrisfer@...>,
spec-prod@...
        cc:     chairs@..., Ian Jacobs <ij@...>, W3C Members
<w3c-ac-members@...>, (bcc: Noah Mendelsohn/Cambridge/IBM)
        Subject:        Review of the Reformatted Recommendations (was Re:
New W3C Web Site Launched)


Hi all,

in the absence of a list specifically tailored for editors, I'd like
to suggest that we can move this discussion to spec-prod@... which
seems to be the closest logical location.

All but a few of the W3C Recommendations listed at:

   http://www.w3.org/TR/tr-status-stds.html

have been reformatted to match the look of the new site. In many cases
this has broken them with various degrees of severity (in some cases
rendering them largely unusable). Surely, users can go to the
previously published version if they happen to need a functional
document, but it's not something that they're likely to guess (unless
they read the small note at the bottom of all those documents).

I don't think that I'm being particularly grouchy or demanding if I
state that running live breaking experiments on documents that are
expected to be stable and authoritative at their canonical URLs is a
rather bad situation, that we should work together to address as
quickly as possible.

I have already heard several people who had reviewed beta.w3.org being
surprised at the changes made to the Recommendations. It seems rather
clear to me that this part of the new site has not received anywhere
near the amount of validation that it ought to have.

So in the spirit of reaching consensus that we are all familiar with,
and in order to help the Team out as it pushes through this huge
redesign effort that is in pretty much every other one of its aspects
absolutely fantastic, to get all the editors past and present who are
willing to help to discuss ways of addressing the current breakage
swiftly. I would think that anyone would naturally be welcome to help,
but I single out editors as they are after all those whose blood and
tears and paper cuts from a thousand man-hours of last comments build
these documents and donate them to W3C. They know the kinks and the
warts, and they've generally had no other option but to listen to
their users at great length.

Amongst the topics that I would like to see resolved as part of this
discussion are:

   - Should this experimentation be performed on live Recommendations
at their canonical URLs?
   - Should old documents be updated at all? If yes, should the WGs in
charge handle them?
   - Do TRs need to have the site navigation included or are they
standalone?
   - Is it okay to have the logos of commercial companies on TRs?
   - Should the SotD and paraphernalia be pushed to the end?

And of course any other concern that editors may bring up. Personally,
I agree that the idea behind most of the changes has merit, but I
believe that this is being rushed out unbaked, and that the quality of
our production is taking a hit because of it.

WDYT?

--
Robin Berjon
   robineko — hired gun, higher standards
   http://robineko.com/

[David Carlisle]

>    - Should this experimentation be performed on live Recommendations  
> at their canonical URLs?

No. especially for documents like MathML which are at last call, we
really can't wait for these things to be fixed, we need TR/MathML2 to
redirect to a valid, readable document, now, today.

>    - Should old documents be updated at all? If yes, should the WGs in  
> charge handle them?

Some css restyling would (perhaps) be acceptable but editing the actual
files (even if those edits did not make the documents invalid) should
not be done. It completely breaks the spirit of the stability
requirements for TR space.

>    - Do TRs need to have the site navigation included or are they  
> standalone?

The top bar navigation isn't so bad as it is clearly distinct but the
sidebar and bottom bar  should not be added. It gratuitously mixes non
normative text in with the text of the recommendation with very little
visual clues that this is being done.


>    - Is it okay to have the logos of commercial companies on TRs?
No.


>    - Should the SotD and paraphernalia be pushed to the end?
No.

One could perhaps make a case for changing the position going forward
but the existing texts were written assuming a particular position,
making forward not backward references to the document, they can not in
general be moved.


> And of course any other concern that editors may bring up.

The documents should either be valid html served as text/html or valid
xhtml served as application/xhtml+xml. To sloppily produce xhtml served
as text/html means you are relying on the error correction on the
browser to correctly make something out of invalid html syntax, with the
result you see in most of the curent XML related recs where <a/> syntax,
parsed as text/html causes virtually the entire document to be styled as
a link with a mouse over styling that underlines random runs of text.

As a first, immediate, cause of action, all the short undatated URL
should change to redirect to the original versions until the new
versions are usable.


David

________________________________________________________________________
The Numerical Algorithms Group Ltd is a company registered in England
and Wales with company number 1249803. The registered office is:
Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, United Kingdom.

This e-mail has been scanned for all viruses by Star. The service is
powered by MessageLabs.
________________________________________________________________________

[Shane McCarron]

Further to this... in many specs there are non-normative versions like
postscript and PDF that will no longer match!  This is unacceptable to
me as an editor, and a quick poll of the call I am on right now (RDFa
Task Force) shows that others agree.

--
Shane P. McCarron                          Phone: [phone] x120
Managing Director                            Fax: [phone]
ApTest Minnesota                            Inet: shane@...

[David Carlisle]

> Further to this... in many specs there are non-normative versions like
> postscript and PDF t

in the case of mathml at least this is cunningly catered for by removing
all the links to non normative versions, so you have a hard job getting
to the version of the mathml2 spec that uses mathml for example.

David

________________________________________________________________________
The Numerical Algorithms Group Ltd is a company registered in England
and Wales with company number 1249803. The registered office is:
Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, United Kingdom.

This e-mail has been scanned for all viruses by Star. The service is
powered by MessageLabs.
________________________________________________________________________

[Shane McCarron]

Err.... yay?  That's completely unacceptable.  I assume you agree.  We went to a lot of trouble to produce multiple versions of the documents.  We want those versions to remain available to our constituents.

David Carlisle wrote:

Further to this... in many specs there are non-normative versions like 
postscript and PDF t
    

in the case of mathml at least this is cunningly catered for by removing
all the links to non normative versions, so you have a hard job getting
to the version of the mathml2 spec that uses mathml for example.

David

________________________________________________________________________
The Numerical Algorithms Group Ltd is a company registered in England
and Wales with company number 1249803. The registered office is:
Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, United Kingdom.

This e-mail has been scanned for all viruses by Star. The service is
powered by MessageLabs. 
________________________________________________________________________
  

[Maciej Stachowiak]

I have considered the change to presentation ofpublished RECs over the  
past few days. Speaking only for myself and not Apple or the HTML WG,  
I must admit I am not happy with the change. Thoughts on Robin's  
questions:

On Oct 15, 2009, at 7:32 AM, Robin Berjon wrote:

>
> Amongst the topics that I would like to see resolved as part of this  
> discussion are:
>
>  - Should this experimentation be performed on live Recommendations  
> at their canonical URLs?

No. Changing the appearance of specifications is a sensitive issue. It  
would be better to start with new Working Drafts, or with WG Notes, as  
a way to work out the kinks.

>  - Should old documents be updated at all? If yes, should the WGs in  
> charge handle them?

No. In my opinion, old RECs should not be updated at all without going  
through the appropriate formal Process to update a REC, even if the  
changes are only intended to be cosmetic.

>  - Do TRs need to have the site navigation included or are they  
> standalone?

No. I think TRs not only do not need the site navigation, they *should  
not* haveit It's true that Technical Reports of the W3C are published  
*on* the W3C site. But I think it is a mistake to present them as  
*part of* the W3C site. That seems inappropriate to me. Web Standards  
should stand alone. The practice of other standards bodies is that the  
standards documents stand alone; they are not presented as an  
intrinsic part of some organizations Web site.

>  - Is it okay to have the logos of commercial companies on TRs?

I'm ok with this on most of the W3C site, but it seems to be in bad  
taste as to TRs. We should be very careful to avoid even the slightest  
appearance that Web Standards documents are being used as an  
advertising platform. And the tradeoff, I feel, is not a good one.  
Most readers of the HTML4.01 specification, for instance, do not need  
an immediate affordance to search the whole W3C site, or to see what  
the W3C is up to on Twitter.

>  - Should the SotD and paraphernalia be pushed to the end?

No. Status of this Document sections often contain information that is  
critical to understanding the document. And these sections were  
written with the understanding that they would be at the very  
beginning of the document - otherwise some material in the SotD may  
have been put in the abstract or introduction. I think it's bad to  
change this retroactively for old documents, even if we wanted to  
change this for future documents.

Regards,
Maciej

[Michael Champion-2]

I agree with Robin and Jim that there wasn't enough consultation with WGs before their publications were reformatted.  I'd suggest immediately rolling back the changes to the *specs'* formatting (not the overall website -- there are issues, but I will follow Ian's advice to be patient).   Then, follow a process such as Robin suggests to work through the issues and let WGs opt-in -- or at least opt out-- of the new CSS. If you need guinea pigs, use submissions, Recommendations without active WGs, etc., but leave active WGs in control of both the form and content of their specs.

I personally like the new look of the documents and believe that most WGs will eventually opt-in, but the team really needs to respect the consensus process and the principle that the WGs own the specs they produce.

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-ac-forum-request@... [mailto:w3c-ac-forum-request@...] On Behalf Of Robin Berjon
Sent: Thursday, October 15, 2009 7:33 AM
To: Christopher B Ferris; spec-prod@...
Cc: chairs@...; Ian Jacobs; W3C Members
Subject: Review of the Reformatted Recommendations (was Re: New W3C Web Site Launched)

Hi all,

in the absence of a list specifically tailored for editors, I'd like to suggest that we can move this discussion to spec-prod@... which seems to be the closest logical location.

All but a few of the W3C Recommendations listed at:

  http://www.w3.org/TR/tr-status-stds.html

have been reformatted to match the look of the new site. In many cases this has broken them with various degrees of severity (in some cases rendering them largely unusable). Surely, users can go to the previously published version if they happen to need a functional document, but it's not something that they're likely to guess (unless they read the small note at the bottom of all those documents).

I don't think that I'm being particularly grouchy or demanding if I state that running live breaking experiments on documents that are expected to be stable and authoritative at their canonical URLs is a rather bad situation, that we should work together to address as quickly as possible.

I have already heard several people who had reviewed beta.w3.org being surprised at the changes made to the Recommendations. It seems rather clear to me that this part of the new site has not received anywhere near the amount of validation that it ought to have.

So in the spirit of reaching consensus that we are all familiar with, and in order to help the Team out as it pushes through this huge redesign effort that is in pretty much every other one of its aspects absolutely fantastic, to get all the editors past and present who are willing to help to discuss ways of addressing the current breakage swiftly. I would think that anyone would naturally be welcome to help, but I single out editors as they are after all those whose blood and tears and paper cuts from a thousand man-hours of last comments build these documents and donate them to W3C. They know the kinks and the warts, and they've generally had no other option but to listen to their users at great length.

Amongst the topics that I would like to see resolved as part of this discussion are:

  - Should this experimentation be performed on live Recommendations at their canonical URLs?
  - Should old documents be updated at all? If yes, should the WGs in charge handle them?
  - Do TRs need to have the site navigation included or are they standalone?
  - Is it okay to have the logos of commercial companies on TRs?
  - Should the SotD and paraphernalia be pushed to the end?

And of course any other concern that editors may bring up. Personally, I agree that the idea behind most of the changes has merit, but I believe that this is being rushed out unbaked, and that the quality of our production is taking a hit because of it.

WDYT?

--
Robin Berjon
  robineko - hired gun, higher standards
  http://robineko.com/

[noah_mendelsohn]

As I've said, I strongly agree, and would like to add an additional point:

Keep in mind that various groups have, for good or bad reasons, augmented
the standard CSS with customizations or additions, and the new base CSS is
mangling some of these.  Compare the renderings of constraints, principles
and good practice notes from the old version of the Architecture of the
World Wide Web (attachment ArchdocOriginal.jpg) [I can't even get a
hyperlink for this in the old format!!!] and the new [1]
(ArchdocBroken.jpg).   The layout is clearly broken, and the color coding
of the boxes is also lost.

Furthermore, those boxes were intentionally parallel in layout to the ones
used for "Stories" (other two attachments).  First of all, the layout of
the stories themselves is now pretty bad (no padding on the bottom), but
the similarity with good practice notes, constraints, and principles is
also now less apparent.

I request that all of this be reverted immediately.  It's very
unprofessional looking as it stands, and arguably misleading. Furthermore,
fixing the architecture document and various findings to "work" with the
new CSS would be time consuming and unnecessary IMO, and who's to say
nobody would try another change later?

The larger observation here is:  don't assume that the decoupling of style
and content is sufficiently robust in practice that you can go swapping
stylesheets on deployed documents.  It is possible to achieve this if the
authors of every document are aware from the start that this might happen
and if they plan for it, but then it can become extremely difficult to
meet the demand for features specific to particular sorts of documents
(principles, constraints, and good practice notes in the case of AWWW).
The safe assumption is, IMO:  act as if each publication is permanently
bound to its stylesheets unless you have specifically verified that
changes aren't going to compromise the quality of the result. Furthermore,
don't assume that you can legislate this away be telling groups to live
with only a bounded set of stylesheet classes used in limited ways. That's
a fine thing to try for when content is quite repetitive in nature or
tightly controlled, but W3C publications cover a very wide range of
subject matter and audiences;  such a restriction would not be practical
for them.

Noah

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/webarch/

--------------------------------------
Noah Mendelsohn
IBM Corporation
One Rogers Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
1-617-693-4036
--------------------------------------








Michael Champion <Michael.Champion@...>
Sent by: chairs-request@...
10/15/2009 12:10 PM
 
        To:     Robin Berjon <robin@...>, Christopher B Ferris
<chrisfer@...>, "spec-prod@..." <spec-prod@...>
        cc:     "chairs@..." <chairs@...>, Ian Jacobs <ij@...>,
W3C Members <w3c-ac-members@...>, Michael Rys <mrys@...>,
(bcc: Noah Mendelsohn/Cambridge/IBM)
        Subject:        RE: Review of the Reformatted Recommendations (was
Re: New W3C Web  Site Launched)


I agree with Robin and Jim that there wasn't enough consultation with WGs
before their publications were reformatted.  I'd suggest immediately
rolling back the changes to the *specs'* formatting (not the overall
website -- there are issues, but I will follow Ian's advice to be
patient).   Then, follow a process such as Robin suggests to work through
the issues and let WGs opt-in -- or at least opt out-- of the new CSS. If
you need guinea pigs, use submissions, Recommendations without active WGs,
etc., but leave active WGs in control of both the form and content of
their specs.

I personally like the new look of the documents and believe that most WGs
will eventually opt-in, but the team really needs to respect the consensus
process and the principle that the WGs own the specs they produce.

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-ac-forum-request@... [mailto:w3c-ac-forum-request@...] On
Behalf Of Robin Berjon
Sent: Thursday, October 15, 2009 7:33 AM
To: Christopher B Ferris; spec-prod@...
Cc: chairs@...; Ian Jacobs; W3C Members
Subject: Review of the Reformatted Recommendations (was Re: New W3C Web
Site Launched)

Hi all,

in the absence of a list specifically tailored for editors, I'd like to
suggest that we can move this discussion to spec-prod@... which seems
to be the closest logical location.

All but a few of the W3C Recommendations listed at:

  http://www.w3.org/TR/tr-status-stds.html

have been reformatted to match the look of the new site. In many cases
this has broken them with various degrees of severity (in some cases
rendering them largely unusable). Surely, users can go to the previously
published version if they happen to need a functional document, but it's
not something that they're likely to guess (unless they read the small
note at the bottom of all those documents).

I don't think that I'm being particularly grouchy or demanding if I state
that running live breaking experiments on documents that are expected to
be stable and authoritative at their canonical URLs is a rather bad
situation, that we should work together to address as quickly as possible.

I have already heard several people who had reviewed beta.w3.org being
surprised at the changes made to the Recommendations. It seems rather
clear to me that this part of the new site has not received anywhere near
the amount of validation that it ought to have.

So in the spirit of reaching consensus that we are all familiar with, and
in order to help the Team out as it pushes through this huge redesign
effort that is in pretty much every other one of its aspects absolutely
fantastic, to get all the editors past and present who are willing to help
to discuss ways of addressing the current breakage swiftly. I would think
that anyone would naturally be welcome to help, but I single out editors
as they are after all those whose blood and tears and paper cuts from a
thousand man-hours of last comments build these documents and donate them
to W3C. They know the kinks and the warts, and they've generally had no
other option but to listen to their users at great length.

Amongst the topics that I would like to see resolved as part of this
discussion are:

  - Should this experimentation be performed on live Recommendations at
their canonical URLs?
  - Should old documents be updated at all? If yes, should the WGs in
charge handle them?
  - Do TRs need to have the site navigation included or are they
standalone?
  - Is it okay to have the logos of commercial companies on TRs?
  - Should the SotD and paraphernalia be pushed to the end?

And of course any other concern that editors may bring up. Personally, I
agree that the idea behind most of the changes has merit, but I believe
that this is being rushed out unbaked, and that the quality of our
production is taking a hit because of it.

WDYT?

--
Robin Berjon
  robineko - hired gun, higher standards
  http://robineko.com/

[Tim Bray-3]

On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 7:32 AM, Robin Berjon <robin@...> wrote:

>  - Is it okay to have the logos of commercial companies on TRs?

I find it troubling, verging on offensive, that there are three
commercial entities (Google, Twitter, and Identi.ca) who now have
branding on the front of Web Standards.  What's next, "Sponsored by
Cialis"?  -Tim

[Jim Melton-3]

Gentlepeople,

I appreciate Robin's well-said message suggesting some questions
whose answers should guide this topic as it goes forwards, and I'd
like to take the opportunity to express my viewpoint on his
questions.  (I hasten to add that my opinion does not represent any
official position of my employer, but does represent my experience as
a Working Group chair and as an editor of standards in several
different fora for two and a half decades.

With respect, I don't believe that moving the discussion to spec-prod
is necessary, and it might not be helpful.  I don't believe that any
of my WG's editors are subscribers to spec-prod (indeed, I'm not
certain that I myself am a member), much less all members of my
WG.  This subject is of sufficient importance that I believe it
deserves the widest visibility.


At 10/15/2009 08:32 AM, Robin Berjon wrote:

>   - Should this experimentation be performed on live Recommendations
>at their canonical URLs?

Absolutely not, and the W3C team should not have to be told
this.  Commercial enterprises know never to make experimental changes
to the products on which their customers depend, nor even to their
production systems used internally only.  Arguments that "we didn't
change the original documents, which were still available at their
original URIs" don't really fly.  The "most recent version" URIs
resolved to the reformatted documents, as did the reformatted TR
page, and the vast majority of the general public use either the
shortname URI (most recent version) or the TR page links to access
W3C documents.  Virtually nobody manually types in a dated URI to
access a specific version, and they can do that only if they happen
to have memorized the date of publication in any case!

>   - Should old documents be updated at all? If yes, should the WGs in
>charge handle them?

I don't actually think that the reformatting is justified for old
documents OR for new documents.  I disagree with some who have said
that the new format looks better, but that's obviously nothing more
than a matter of personal taste.  My reason for objecting to the
reformatting is as simple as this: W3C has spent enormous resources
developing a brand and recognition of its specs.  Changing the
appearance of the brand for no apparent reason beyond changing it has
proven to be a major problem for many commercial enterprises and it
may do so for W3C as well.  There is value in being perceived as an
organization that produces stable specifications and seemingly
arbitrary changes (even to the formatting) might cause some of your
customers to question that perception.

More importantly to me, and to my WG, is the fact that we've spent a
tremendous amount of effort, time, and energy creating document
features that make our documents easier to use and to read, while
remaining absolutely faithful to the W3C published style guide and
the W3C look and feel.  Applying blanket reformatting to our
documents without any knowledge of how our documents function has
caused a variety of breaking changes, including some functional
breaks (admittedly, however, most are formatting breaks).  To adapt
our various enhancements to another look and feel will cost
additional resources.  As my WG, like almost all other WGs, have
extremely limited resources (heck, we are having problems just
getting our minimum requirements accomplished) in a very bad economy,
we simply do not understand how we should be expected to start
re-doing work we've already done just so somebody's idea of
"prettier" can be applied to our documents.

I cannot say what my WG members will decide in the future, but I
would not be surprised if they would argue never to adopt these
arbitrary reformatting changes.

>   - Do TRs need to have the site navigation included or are they
>standalone?

TRs are not, IMHO, supposed to be integral parts of the warp and woof
of a web site.  They are supposed to be documents whose value is
based in part on the ability to link within themselves and to link to
other related documents -- not all of which are even available on
that web site (e.g., IETF RFCs).  W3C policies and copyright clearly
allow people to keep their own copies of the TRs, within their
companies and on their private computers.  However much we might all
wish that the world is 100% connected 24x7, it simply ain't so.  If I
can't get my work done in a timely fashion when my Internet
connection is broken, even though I have all the documents I need on
my laptop, simply because I can't get to the W3C site to fetch a
bunch of icons and menus, I am going to be increasingly less than
enthusiastic about using the W3C TRs.

>   - Is it okay to have the logos of commercial companies on TRs?

Absolutely not, unless the technology represented by the logos are
integral to the technical content of the given TR.  In other words, I
might not object to, e.g., a Firefox logo on an HTML TR if it linked
to a clean demo of some esoteric HTML feature that Firefox has
implemented particularly well.

I don't mind there being various commercial companies' logos on the
W3C web site (e.g., Google for a search box, Twitter for
microblogging, and the like) and think that is well within the
authority of the team to determine.  But the TRs are supposed to
belong to the community, not to the W3C alone, and I presume that the
owner of one search engine might not be an enthusiastic supporter of
the technology defined by a specification on which the logo of (only)
a competing search engine appears.  Whether it's intended as
advertising or not (obviously not, in this case), perceptions matter.

Trust me, if the DB2 (database system by IBM) logo appeared at the
top of every W3C spec, Oracle would not be an enthusiastic member of
W3C for very long.

>   - Should the SotD and paraphernalia be pushed to the end?

No, I think not.  In spite of some recent comments to the effect that
"nobody reads the SotD and valuable information is overlooked when it
appears there", my experience is different.  I personally read the
SotD to be sure that the document I'm reading is the one I wanted to
read, and may people to whom I talk about W3C TRs have implied or
stated that they do the same.  When I have to wait for the entire
document to download (sorry, but not everybody has a 10MB/sec link to
the Internet) before I can even tell whether "this' is the correct
version, I tend to get frustrated.


My personal recommendation is that all of the reformatted TRs be
removed immediately and the "real" documents be given the same
visibility and accessibility they had last week.  I do not believe
that any documents currently under development, much less those for
which RECs or other final stages have been achieved, should be
reformatted without an explicit opt-in decision by the developing
WG.  I would prefer that documents not yet under development by any
arm of the W3C continue to use the current ("old") formatting,
because I don't think it's helpful to change it, certainly not in the
way that it has been experimentally changed.  However, if a rather
more carefully thought out reformatting effort were to eventuate,
then perhaps future documents could be created using the new
formatting/style rules.

Hope this helps,
    Jim

========================================================================
Jim Melton --- Editor of ISO/IEC 9075-* (SQL)     Phone: [phone]
   Chair, W3C XML Query WG; XQX (etc.) editor       Fax : [phone]
Oracle Corporation        Oracle Email: jim dot melton at oracle dot com
1930 Viscounti Drive      Standards email: jim dot melton at acm dot org
Sandy, UT 84093-1063 USA          Personal email: jim at melton dot name
========================================================================
=  Facts are facts.   But any opinions expressed are the opinions      =
=  only of myself and may or may not reflect the opinions of anybody   =
=  else with whom I may or may not have discussed the issues at hand.  =
========================================================================  

[Christopher B Ferris]

+1

speaking for myself only.

Cheers,

Christopher Ferris
IBM Distinguished Engineer, CTO Industry Standards
IBM Software Group, Standards Strategy
email: chrisfer@...
blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/chrisferris
phone: [phone]

From:	Michael Champion <Michael.Champion@...>
To:	Robin Berjon <robin@...>, Christopher B Ferris/Waltham/IBM@IBMUS, "spec-prod@..." <spec-prod@...>
Cc:	"chairs@..." <chairs@...>, Ian Jacobs <ij@...>, W3C Members <w3c-ac-members@...>, Michael Rys <mrys@...>
Date:	10/15/2009 12:17 PM
Subject:	RE: Review of the Reformatted Recommendations (was Re: New W3C Web  Site Launched)
Sent by:	chairs-request@...

---

I agree with Robin and Jim that there wasn't enough consultation with WGs before their publications were reformatted.  I'd suggest immediately rolling back the changes to the *specs'* formatting (not the overall website -- there are issues, but I will follow Ian's advice to be patient).   Then, follow a process such as Robin suggests to work through the issues and let WGs opt-in -- or at least opt out-- of the new CSS. If you need guinea pigs, use submissions, Recommendations without active WGs, etc., but leave active WGs in control of both the form and content of their specs.

I personally like the new look of the documents and believe that most WGs will eventually opt-in, but the team really needs to respect the consensus process and the principle that the WGs own the specs they produce.

-----Original Message-----
From: w3c-ac-forum-request@... [w3c-ac-forum-request@...] On Behalf Of Robin Berjon
Sent: Thursday, October 15, 2009 7:33 AM
To: Christopher B Ferris; spec-prod@...
Cc: chairs@...; Ian Jacobs; W3C Members
Subject: Review of the Reformatted Recommendations (was Re: New W3C Web Site Launched)

Hi all,

in the absence of a list specifically tailored for editors, I'd like to suggest that we can move this discussion to spec-prod@... which seems to be the closest logical location.

All but a few of the W3C Recommendations listed at:

 http://www.w3.org/TR/tr-status-stds.html

have been reformatted to match the look of the new site. In many cases this has broken them with various degrees of severity (in some cases rendering them largely unusable). Surely, users can go to the previously published version if they happen to need a functional document, but it's not something that they're likely to guess (unless they read the small note at the bottom of all those documents).

I don't think that I'm being particularly grouchy or demanding if I state that running live breaking experiments on documents that are expected to be stable and authoritative at their canonical URLs is a rather bad situation, that we should work together to address as quickly as possible.

I have already heard several people who had reviewed beta.w3.org being surprised at the changes made to the Recommendations. It seems rather clear to me that this part of the new site has not received anywhere near the amount of validation that it ought to have.

So in the spirit of reaching consensus that we are all familiar with, and in order to help the Team out as it pushes through this huge redesign effort that is in pretty much every other one of its aspects absolutely fantastic, to get all the editors past and present who are willing to help to discuss ways of addressing the current breakage swiftly. I would think that anyone would naturally be welcome to help, but I single out editors as they are after all those whose blood and tears and paper cuts from a thousand man-hours of last comments build these documents and donate them to W3C. They know the kinks and the warts, and they've generally had no other option but to listen to their users at great length.

Amongst the topics that I would like to see resolved as part of this discussion are:

 - Should this experimentation be performed on live Recommendations at their canonical URLs?
 - Should old documents be updated at all? If yes, should the WGs in charge handle them?
 - Do TRs need to have the site navigation included or are they standalone?
 - Is it okay to have the logos of commercial companies on TRs?
 - Should the SotD and paraphernalia be pushed to the end?

And of course any other concern that editors may bring up. Personally, I agree that the idea behind most of the changes has merit, but I believe that this is being rushed out unbaked, and that the quality of our production is taking a hit because of it.

WDYT?

--
Robin Berjon
 robineko - hired gun, higher standards
 http://robineko.com/

[Dan Connolly]

[sorry for the delay -- moderator]

On Thu, Oct 15, 2009 at 7:32 AM, Robin Berjon <robin@...> wrote:

>  - Is it okay to have the logos of commercial companies on TRs?

I find it troubling, verging on offensive, that there are three
commercial entities (Google, Twitter, and Identi.ca) who now have
branding on the front of Web Standards.  What's next, "Sponsored by
Cialis"?  -Tim