Comments on: W3C Funding and Validators http://manwithnoblog.com/2008/12/14/w3c-funding-and-validators/ Gary Barber rants on user experience, and the controlled chaos of the Web Industry Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:19:28 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: olivier http://manwithnoblog.com/2008/12/14/w3c-funding-and-validators/comment-page-1/#comment-8545 olivier Fri, 19 Dec 2008 02:42:13 +0000 http://manwithnoblog.com/?p=241#comment-8545 Hi Gary, you wrote: “ You will note that the W3C is very willing it seems for community to contribute code wise it’s just they aren’t telling us this in big neon lights” and that's very true… and I'm honestly not sure what those big neon lights should be made of. We do mention at every opportunity that the code is open (e.g http://www.w3.org/Status#contribute ) - and indeed more than a few people download the code, play with it, and a few end up contributing. Likewise, feature requests or bug reports are always welcome, and often we remind people that “patches are welcome too”. There is a very healthy community of “power users” around the validators, who give a lot of their time answering questions like “WHY IS MY CODE NOT VALIDATING???!??" and generally giving a lot of good advice on how to develop features or discuss about where the tools should/could go. What we have fewer of, indeed, are developers. Maybe the validator projects are not very appealing to the average web developer (for one thing, indeed, the fact that most of these tools are built around perl or java libraries does alienate the php/ruby coders)? Maybe we need big red lettering saying “we welcome you as developers of the validators?” And then… You do have a point when saying “Mind you thinking on this, I can bet some of the upcoming work is going to be that not that really sexy or exciting in development terms, hence just the type of things suited to a paid position”. That is true, and I would say that it is true regardless of sexiness, not just for the W3C validators but most open-source projects I know: there is always a developer lead/community manager who is either a “benevolent dictator” (usually whoever started the project) or paid staff (think of many large open source projects, e.g at Mozilla, Google, Apple, etc) Can we find a better model with the community playing a bigger role, and the strain on w3c lessened? That would be great, and we need to make progress in giving the projects to the community, empower the community, and let the community take charge. Can we do without staffing at all? Probably not, hence the need for some money. Both community engagement and community-driven funding will need people with a voice in the community, relaying the info that the validators are there for the community, but that the community also needs to be there for the validators. Hi Gary,

you wrote: “ You will note that the W3C is very willing it seems for community to contribute code wise it’s just they aren’t telling us this in big neon lights” and that’s very true… and I’m honestly not sure what those big neon lights should be made of.

We do mention at every opportunity that the code is open (e.g http://www.w3.org/Status#contribute ) – and indeed more than a few people download the code, play with it, and a few end up contributing. Likewise, feature requests or bug reports are always welcome, and often we remind people that “patches are welcome too”.

There is a very healthy community of “power users” around the validators, who give a lot of their time answering questions like “WHY IS MY CODE NOT VALIDATING???!??” and generally giving a lot of good advice on how to develop features or discuss about where the tools should/could go.

What we have fewer of, indeed, are developers. Maybe the validator projects are not very appealing to the average web developer (for one thing, indeed, the fact that most of these tools are built around perl or java libraries does alienate the php/ruby coders)? Maybe we need big red lettering saying “we welcome you as developers of the validators?”

And then… You do have a point when saying “Mind you thinking on this, I can bet some of the upcoming work is going to be that not that really sexy or exciting in development terms, hence just the type of things suited to a paid position”. That is true, and I would say that it is true regardless of sexiness, not just for the W3C validators but most open-source projects I know: there is always a developer lead/community manager who is either a “benevolent dictator” (usually whoever started the project) or paid staff (think of many large open source projects, e.g at Mozilla, Google, Apple, etc)

Can we find a better model with the community playing a bigger role, and the strain on w3c lessened? That would be great, and we need to make progress in giving the projects to the community, empower the community, and let the community take charge.

Can we do without staffing at all? Probably not, hence the need for some money.

Both community engagement and community-driven funding will need people with a voice in the community, relaying the info that the validators are there for the community, but that the community also needs to be there for the validators.

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