View source for why-are-content-standards-hard

= Why are content standards hard? =

A brainstorm of the problems/distractions that plague typical content standards efforts. -[http://tantek.com/ Tantek]

* completeness
** based on platonic ideals of content (as opposed to human behaviors)
** edge cases
** scope/feature creep - general purposeness
** extensibility
* ego
** reinvention - web and modern search engines have reduced excuses for this, but we will still have NIH behaviors even when ignorance isn't a problem.
** desire to be the "outside container" (we'll put all other stuff inside us)
* self/community-design bias
** designed by technologists for technologists (as opposed to for authors)
** note: it was an *accident* that HTML was easy to learn for non-technical authors, designers, artists etc.: http://tantek.com/log/2003/0813t1158.html#handauthoring
** localization / internationalization issues (first/last name are different in some countries)
* legal issues, copyrights, patents etc.