@jalefkowit @Lady @aparrish Well THIS I think I disagree with (strongly?).
HTML and the norms/patterns of usage around it GREW -- saying it either Makes Sense or Doesn't Make Sense, or that it was either Planned or Unplanned, is a false binary. There were and are lots of plans, yes -- to some extent, one plan for every time anyone has ever looked out at an audience and picked HTML as the language to speak to them in.
I don't know if it would be difficult for the MDN writers to admit this. I think it's just that, making that attempt is the point of all this, anyways. Of COURSE you'd try to stretch it as far and as well as you could -- how else do you find the boundaries? If the rest of the documentation is understandable enough, then I think that gives enough context for a reader to understand why this came out the way it did. Which is a success. I don't think it's an error.
@Lady @jalefkowit @aparrish IMO the purpose is to instruct for how to fit in to an idealized/simplified model of projected future usage.
I think.
(... maybe I'm just being overcomplicatingly roundabout, though...)
@Lady @jalefkowit @aparrish Like, the descriptive task is inherently a part of that. It's like a dictionary.
@gaditb @jalefkowit@octodon.social @aparrish like descriptively, MDN is first and foremost an instructional resource. its job is to get people writing correct HTML quickly. it's not to explain why things are the way they are
is that the correct mission? should there be more room for the other stuff? 🤷🏻♀️