Comic Update: The WHATWG Legion of Doom?
Posted by Kyle Weems on September 14, 2009When I constructed a comic last week paying homage to the HTML5 Super Friends, it was not my intent to enter into a dread bargain with the force known as “continuity”, a dark master that requires its fearful slaves to create sequential plots that follow chronologically from one to another. It’s largely been my goal to avoid such, due to the impact it can have on my ability to crack a joke. I could argue that making the HTML5 spec seem humorous is enough of a challenge. Enfolding it in some sort of continuous plot at the same time is an effort that largely exceeds any kick I get out of making funny squirrel drawings.
Nonetheless, by the time this weekend had rolled about, I had been exposed to some commentary about the announcement and concerns the Super Friends had produced, given by one Mr. Ian Hickson, esquire. I largely have told myself that I poke fun at Hixie far too often in proportion to what any man deserves. After all, he is putting a lot of large effort into HTML5, which clearly wouldn’t exist in any usable state yet without that effort. Yet, his commentary seemed so deliciously full of hubris and petulance that I was physically incapable of not dressing him in Lex Luthor’s strange purple jumpsuit and assembling around him a legion of foes for today’s comic (which also features Anne van Kesteren and Michael(TM) Smith).
Here is the deal: By and large, web designers (aka: authors) have been largely skeptical about how well HTML5 is going to meet our needs. This isn’t entirely surprising, as our major exposure to HTML5 has been watching browser vendors and accessibility and/or microformat specialists duke it out over any number of seemingly arbitrary issues. Taken at a distance, or even up close when swallowed whole (have fun with the mailing list if you’re a masochist), it could create the impression that HTML5 is some sort of dark Endorian jungle, filled with hostile ewoks lying in wait for well-meaning designers to walk past, oblivious of their gruesome fate.
What the HTML5 Super Friends did, with a very public, non-mailing list announcement about their perusal and acceptance of HTML5, is create a sense that all will be well for designers as HTML5 slips closer to the (possibly too soon) date for Last Call. When Jeffrey Zeldman, Eric Meyer, and every other notable name on their list, said “Hey, HTML5 is cool, come on in the water,” they started a large ripple through the design-o-sphere that is bound to be felt very sharply in the dwindling days remaining in this year. What helped that ripple wasn’t just a blanket statement of “It’s all good,” because that would be a lie, and most of us are smart enough to know it.
Rather, they exposed their concerns, in plain language. They then said, despite these differences, which we hope are addressed, we still like what we see.
Call me a sheep if it helps you feel better about yourself, but that sort of critical support for HTML5 has greatly increased my own comfort with the spec as it solidifies.
So, when Ian Hickson, HTML5 editor, gets his knickers bunched up in a fit because the Super Friends decided to do a posting on their various sites/blogs/whatevers about the topic first, then in due process submit their concerns “formally” to the WHATWG mailing list… I can’t help but find the words “petty” or “egotistical” floating to the front of my mind.
To answer your questions, Ian: Yes, the WHATWG’s public mailing list is in fact public. However, it is not nearly as public to the target audience of the Super Friends’ efforts (aka: web designers) as their very blogs/feeds/etc. They are engaging in the process of getting buy-in from designers, which HTML5 has been slow on, rather than the WHATWG, which I will wager is already really well sold on this whole HTML5 doohicky. There is no shame delivered, nor insult intended, by their actions in publicly (and in their own preferred fashion) declaring that HTML5 is good, but could use some tweaking.
So, good sir, I recommend you calm down, take a deep breath, and stop being snippy about the spec every time there’s a public or private discussion of HTML5 that did not directly involve yourself. We’re all painfully aware at this point that the spec won’t change without our power-invested Leviathan’s approval.
Tags: anne van kesteren, Comic, html, html5 super friends, ian hickson, legion of doom, michael(tm) smith, whatwg
I’d imagine if people didn’t make a big deal out of off-hand comments on IRC there would be a lot less fuss about HTML5 too, but I guess that’s part of the deal.
(Your style sheet seems to mess up the (lowercase) “v” in my name as far as visual appearance goes by the way. Feel free to delete this.)
@Anne – Ian makes enough sour commentary about the discussion of HTML5 in other groups and communities that I believe his opinion on such things doesn’t qualify as off-hand. There’s enough data present to give a strong case that it is his actual opinion on the topic. By all outward appearances (which, in the case of a large project spread across many organizations that will impact billions of people, matters) he strongly dislikes any extended discussions or suggestions about the HTML5 spec that aren’t through the whatwg mailing list. Which is, at its core, a bit silly.
Re: Fuss. You don’t get to be the sole editor of such an important project without having the burden of being more circumspect in your conversation without it being parroted about by bored cartoonists.
Regarding the capital V. Yes, it’s the text-transform: capitalize getting in the way. I instigated it initially out of distaste of people using lowercase first letters on their normal names, I failed to take into account names such as ‘van’ which lack that capital first letter. I might need to drop the styling as a result. Thanks for bringing that to my attention!
Well, I’m really interested in the outcome of the HTML5 spec, but I’m not subscribed to the mailing list, so these “out-of-place” discussions (i.e., blogs, forums, etc.) are my main source of the current status of it. I know it may not be the best thing to do, but honestly I don’t have the time to read the huge amount of content in it (plus, I hate mailing lists). I’m pretty sure there must be a lot of people like me…
Regarding the comic, I LOVED it hahah. It was the funniest for me
Can’t wait for the next one!
Wow, I’d love your sources for that assertion. I’ve seen Ian state repeatedly that he takes feedback into account from all kinds of sources, e.g.:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2007Apr/1241.html
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Jan/0204.html
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2008Jul/0156.html
He might encourage people to participate on the list, which makes sense as it is a good forum for people with different opinions to come together, but it is certainly not your only means of giving feedback.
To be fair, I think Ian and the rest of the WHATWG members have been doing incredibly *constructive* work for many years (since the Great Web Semantics Schism of June 2004), and thus characterizing them as individuals or as a group as the “Legion of Doom” is fairly inaccurate.
If you think “web designers (aka: authors) have been largely skeptical about how well HTML5 is going to meet our needs”, you should have seen (perhaps you have) the other side of the Great Web Semantics Schism, a mishmash of needlessly complex namespaced XHTML2+XForms+SVG+MathML+RDFa – so foreign to web designers needs that the web design/development/publishing community never took it seriously (after the the second “xmlns:…” most authors tend to glaze over).
We should appreciate the hard persistent work the WHATWG has done to push forward practical/pragmatic approaches to evolving the web in contrast to efforts driven more by academia and a few large corporations (some mobile-related) that quickly lost touch with the day to day professional web author.
That being said, your comic comparison does make for good comedy (even if a stretch), and Ian’s assertion (in the linked IRC log) that the WHATWG is the “the original community” when it comes to evolving HTML and good uses thereof is indeed laughable – the modern web design community has been doing this since the early 2000s, long before WHATWG was created, as anyone reading Zeldman’s, Meyer’s, Bowman’s, Cederholm’s blogs (and perhaps occasionally mine) since then knows. Thus it’s no big surprise that such individuals (including myself) continue to have discussions and post feedback on the web, where the longest standing audience interested in “semantic HTML and XHTML” happens to be.
Besides, anyone else see the irony of insisting on using email instead of the web to evolve a *web* technology?
Yeah, my comment was out of line.
[...] "have fun with the ML if you’re a masochist" heh, too true http://www.cssquirrel.com/2009/09/14/comic-update-the-whatwg-legion-of-doom/ [...]
I want to reiterate that I believe, Ian, that you are doing important, valuable work for the future of the web as editor on HTML5. I just disagree (sometimes too strongly, admittedly) with some of your opinions or decisions. In this case, it was your apparent upset at not having a recommendation posted first to the mailing list, rather than to the community it was targeting.
To that effect, Tantek, I agree that the “Legion of Doom” characterization for WHATWG is over-the-top. However, I chose it as a comedic contrast to the Super Friends. I’m not sure if exaggeration for the sake of comedy is always a good choice, but it usually produces the results I’m looking for (namely, making people laugh).
Also, you got to admit, Mike(TM) looks great in the Riddler outfit.
“In this case, it was your apparent upset at not having a recommendation posted first to the mailing list, rather than to the community it was targeting.”
Do you mean requests for changing aspects of HTML5 were meant for a community other than the WHATWG or the HTML WG? That’s … odd.
Anyway, #whatwg has total information awareness systems that lets us locate blog posts, too.
@Henri – The primary purpose of the Super Friends announcement was HTML5 advocacy to web designers. That’s not odd. These are the people who need to buy into using HTML5, otherwise it’ll be unused features sitting inside the browsers.
That purpose was best served by being put in a location that the target audience regularly visits. Zeldman’s blog alone probably gets more designers visiting it than the whatwg mailing list. Combined with the other blogs of the remaining Super Friends, it’s a certainty that they hit a larger group.
It’s worth noting, though, that even Jeremy Keith stated that the concerns section would be put to the whatwg’s mailing list in short order, so it was known the requests would become visible to the whatwg. This statement was quoted and commented on in the irc, so there shouldn’t have been doubt or resentment at whether it would occur.
That said, I don’t think the whatwg requires total information awareness to find those particular posts on those particular popular blogs in which they were located, as opposed to more obscure rantings like my own. Enough of the whatwg community overlaps with the Super Friends’ peer group to ensure that the information would trickle to the proper destination. (As made evident by the discussion about them in the irc.)