In one of his recent lengthy, marathonesque comments in other people’s blog posts, John Allsopp said the following quote in response to Bruce Lawson’s post HTML is a mess: “I guess one of the reasons folks are resorting to raising their legitimate concerns in public fora, rather than directly with the HTML WG (or should that be the WhatWG, or maybe both?) is possible they don’t have a tonne of faith in the process.”

This comment by John sent me down several interesting paths of consideration. Firstly, it made me think that Mr. Allsopp might spend more time writing in other people’s blogs than his own, much like Jeff Croft (who I had the fortune to see at Refresh Bellingham last week) appears to spend more time in every other city in America than the one in which he lives.

Secondly, I briefly thought that I’d start spelling “ton” (American spelling) like “tonne” (which appears to be the Australian, and I’ll bet also the UK spelling). I quickly discarded that plan, since it’d just limit my word count in Twitter. Which made me wonder, do Japanese users of Twitter get to use kanji in their tweets? If so, that seems highly unfair. They could fit a War & Peace sized comment in a single tweet that way. (Note to self: learn Japanese.)

Finally I really got to the meat of what he said in that sentence (one of many that expressed his thoughts on the mess topic Bruce had posted about). Why should you or I bother with figuring out how the hell to send an email to the proper mailing lists for the HTML5 WG? Or the WHAT WG? Heck, I’m not even sure which group is more relevant. The former has more technical authority, but the latter is actually making all the calls. RDFa, ARIA, and other fruits of the loins of other W3C chartered working groups are being disregarded by the HTML5 people consistently, or being carefully argued away with a pleading for use cases, a suggestion that their expertise is flawed, or that alternate solutions (read that: the WHAT WG’s solutions) are the better option.

People who’ve spent decades in service to their fields are being shot down by non-experts. Consider the issues with accessibility. Laura Carlson recently sent a proposal (signed by a lot of notables including accessibility guru John Foliot and HTML5 doctor in residence Bruce Lawson) that suggested the audacious idea that there be a formal procedure that describes how HTML5 will seek accessibility guidance from the W3C WAI groups.

HTML5 editor-for-life Ian Hickson evaded the issue by listing all the unanswered questions he has waiting on such topics instead of addressing the proposal. Sam Ruby one-upped Ian by expressing his disappointment that the proposal even existed.

In a situation like this, where motivated, caring experts in their fields are being ignored or deflected when using the official channels, why should your average John Everyweb even consider unraveling the process involved enough to attempt to address concerns, knowing the almost certain result of such efforts?

I can’t think of any motivating reasons.

Today’s comic features John Foliot (representing accessibility efforts) submitting such a suggestion to the HTML5 group(s), with my squirrel alter ego looking on in horror at the results. Consider it a softened metaphor that reflects my own growing dismay at the direction HTML5 seems to be heading when working with others.