[microformats-discuss] On Digital Web Article and Educating Others (was Web 2.0: Abused)

[Ryan King]

Molly-

I'm so glad you're here. I somehow didn't realize you were on the list.

Your analysis below is great. I think we (myself especially) can be  
rather myopic, assuming that others' have the same technical  
background and experience. I think we also treat others as  
adversaries, where it would be more productive to treat them as  
"opportunities for education" or "opportunities for community building."

I know there's several people on this list (and they probably know  
who they are) that I was, at one point, tempted to treat as  
*adversaries,* but who I now count as friends and collaborators.

-ryan

On Oct 2, 2005, at 1:49 PM, Molly Holzschlag wrote:

> I've been wanting an opportunity to pipe up and say hello to  
> everyone, and
> the comments on the Digital Web article provide a good opportunity  
> to do
> just that.
>
> Many people here know me but for those that don't, I am an author and
> educator, Group Lead of the Web Standards Project, and an invited  
> expert to
> the W3C Internationalization GEO group where I work on outreach and
> relationships in the internationalization area.
>
> I believe in this case the authors have good intentions, and as the  
> general
> readership of the Digital Web audience is mostly IA and design  
> folks, that's
> why we end up with Tantek's assessment that this particular article  
> could
> have been written years ago.
>
> That certainly makes sense to a lot of people here, but not all  
> writers and
> educators are great technologists, or understand the lay of the  
> land as the
> more progressive and visionary folks do. I'm certainly in that  
> category, and
> I'm sure that's a lot of the reason Tantek has always reached out  
> to me - so
> I can improve my understanding and skills in order to make the  
> concepts and
> practices more approachable to a variety of skillsets.
>
> While constructive criticism is one way to handle this sort of  
> thing and
> ignoring it is another, I believe that drawing the people into the  
> community
> is even better if it's possible to do, and in this case it is. It's
> especially important when writers are putting information out there  
> because
> educating them (as I am being educated and corrected every day)  
> makes a
> better product for the masses who visit sites of this nature and  
> don't have
> the depth of skill, experience and technical savvy as so many of the
> readership here does.  Ignoring them should only occur when they  
> turn into
> complete asshats and are unapproachable, and we know who those  
> folks are, or
> rapidly find out.
>
> Where I can contribute something here is to help improve the good  
> info >
> writer/educator > developer flow.
>
> I happen to know one of the authors - Joshua Porter.  He works for  
> User
> Interface Engineering (Jared Spool's company in Cambridge, Mass)  
> and only
> learned to write XHTML and CSS within the past two years, when he  
> first
> attended a session Eric Meyer and I taught at their UI Conference.  
> We'll be
> presenting that session in less than two week's time, so I think   
> great way
> to help shift perspectives into more contemporary thinking and more
> practical articles and information to get people on track is to  
> reach out.
> That said, I'll do just that, and an invitation to join a list such  
> as this
> would be great.
>
> Another way to help is for those of us writing and speaking and  
> training
> from the outside in as well as from within companies and  
> organizations is to
> start pushing some of the materials more aggressively. Again, one  
> way to do
> this is to bring people into the fold who are open to this.
>
> Bottom line is that I don't want to see people who are doing  
> education and
> outreach to very broad audiences be ignored or criticized if  
> instead they
> can be educated, which in turn is good for everyone and all our common
> goals.
>
> Molly
>
> Molly E. Holzschlag
> Author / Instructor / Web Designer
> About Me: http://www.molly.com/
> About Web Standards: http://www.webstandards.org/
> About W3C GEO Working Group: http://www.w3.org/International/geo/
>
>
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--
Ryan King
ryan at technorati.com