Joe Andrieu wrote: > My own frustrations mostly stem from the fact that, IMNSHO, > far too many decisions are made by a small number of people > without any legitimate process in place for building or > judging consensus. The addition of "place" for hCard is a > great example. That was a significant change in semantics > and there was not a consenus about it. Rather, those who > have the functional capability simply updated the wiki. > > Brian responded to this earlier saying he felt it was > appropriate because it reflects common usage. But that > really isn't what a standard is. The problem before the > metric system was that every jurisdiction's common usage for > various measures was different. No interoperability. > Same thing with timezones before standardization. In fact, > microformats and the semantic web are ALL about creating > interoperability. For example, the restrictions on the > namespace are all geared to /forge/ a consensus standard > taxonomy. If that "standard" can change at the drop of a few > emails, it really isn't much of a standard. > > But we have neither quality versioning nor explicity > processes for approving and designating "official" microformats. > > Everything is essentially at the whim of our fearless leaders. > > There is a feeling that things are a bit autocratic, that if > a few people agree its a good thing, then nobody else's > opinion really matters. > > > When only one disruptive individual has problems with governance, > > rather than the community as a whole, then it tends to lead one to > > believe that the problem may be more with the individual > > than with the community or the governance. > > More than just Andy has expressed frustration. > > Tantek, there is no governance for uF other than by cabal, > which historically has proven useful only in a limited scale. > The alternative, of determining a means of governance, need > not create a heavy bureaucracy, in fact, it can be > liberating. Frankly, a more decentralized approach would do > uF good. And that would require a small set of explicit > procedural standards and a huge release of authority. > The obvious and/or naïve bureacratic options could easily > create a mess of burdensome procedures, but there's no reason > we would have to be naïve or choose the obvious.
I just wanted to mention that I *strongly* agree with Joe on his comments that I included above. It's those reasons and others[1] why I've lost most of my initial enthusiasm for Microformats. FWIW. -- -Mike Schinkel http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/ http://www.welldesignedurls.org/ [1] http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blog/enthusiasmformicroformatspremature/ _______________________________________________ microformats-discuss mailing list microformats-discuss@microformats.org http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss