1484732 - Is author part of <cite> or not?

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Developer Documentation Graveyard :: HTML, defect, P3)

Description

[pam]

:: Developer Documentation Request

      Request Type: Correction
     Gecko Version: unspecified
 Technical Contact: 

:: Details

Concerning https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/cite  Per Bug 1432084 the community is stating that whatwg.org is more accurate than w3c.  

W3C is using "author" all over their examples in <cite> at https://www.w3.org/TR/2017/REC-html52-20171214/textlevel-semantics.html#elementdef-cite
but https://html.spec.whatwg.org/dev/text-level-semantics.html#the-cite-element specifically seems to be saying that author is not part of <cite>

But W3C seems to be saying it is because they use it in so many examples and state that it is... so I edited it in to the first paragraph of <cite> at https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/cite  but now after reading your Bug 1432084, I am wondering if I was wrong to do this?

Yes, I know that whatwg states they are the best, but I don't believe them.  Sorry.  W3C is so much cleaner and makes so much more sense to me than some of what whatwg has.  But really, I like mozilla because it seems to be the definitive answer and most up-to-date, so I'm trying my best to help you by editing.  Need guidance for future edits, not just this one.  Instead of editing the document, usually I've been sending in a bug report so I don't cause issues.  Is that the best way?  Or should I continue to edit the documents when I feel that it's the best thing to do?

Comment 1

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

MDN's official policy for years has been that when WHATWG and W3C disagree, we always go with the WHATWG specification. Unless there's a compelling argument to make an exception (I don't recall offhand any times we've made an exception, though I could be wrong), I would recommend that we restore the original text.

Comment 2

[BMO Automation]

MDN Web Docs' bug reporting has now moved to GitHub. From now on, please file content bugs at https://github.com/mdn/sprints/issues/ and platform bugs at https://github.com/mdn/kuma/issues/.