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<TMPL_INCLUDE NAME="header.tmpl">
<div id="main">
<div class="doc"><a id="skip" name="skip"></a>
<h2>How to Provide Feedback For the W3C Markup Validator</h2>
<div id="toc">
<p>There are many ways to send feedback or discuss the Markup Validator:</p>
<ol>
<li>If you need <a href="#needhelp">help on validation or Web authoring</a></li>
<li>If you would like to <a href="#errormsg">send a suggestion on a validation error message</a></li>
<li>If you want to <a href="#mailinglist">help, participate or discuss</a></li>
<li>If you want to <a href="#bugreport">search or report bugs</a>.</li>
</ol>
</div>
<h3 id="needhelp">Finding help on validation and Web authoring</h3>
<p>Your page doesn't validate, and you don't know why, or
you have a question about <acronym title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</acronym>,
stylesheets or validation?</p>
<p>
<strong>First, check our <a href="docs/help.html">Help and <acronym title="Frequently Asked Questions">FAQ</acronym> document</a>, as well as the
<a href="http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/">Web authoring <acronym title="Frequently Asked Questions">FAQ</acronym></a>
to see if your question has been answered there.</strong>
</p>
<p>
The two most common problems are:
<a href="http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/problems.html#amp">Validating pages with
ampersands (&'s) in
<acronym title="Uniform Resource Locators">URLs</acronym></a> and
<a href="http://www.htmlhelp.com/tools/validator/problems.html#script">Validating pages with
JavaScript: <acronym title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</acronym>
in a <code>SCRIPT</code> Element</a>.
</p>
<p>
If your problem isn't covered by one of the resources above,
you can send it to one of the following forums:
</p>
<ul>
<li>Usenet newsgroup: <code><a href="news:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html">comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html</a></code></li>
<li><a href="http://www.hwg.org/"><acronym
title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</acronym> Writers Guild</a>
<a title="HTML Writers Guild Mailing Lists"
href="http://www.hwg.org/lists/">mailing lists</a></li>
</ul>
<p>
Each of these forums have plenty of experienced <acronym
title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</acronym>
authors who are willing to share their expertise. If you are
commenting on a specific page, be sure to provide a
<acronym title="Universal Resource Locator">URL</acronym>
when you ask your question!
</p>
<h3 id="errormsg">Error message feedback</h3>
<p>If you think the error messages in the Markup Validator's result pages could be improved, or are not comprehensible,
you can send questions and suggestions to our mailing-list.</p>
<p>If you do not understand an error while validating a page, or if you need help on validation, <strong>read the FAQ</strong> and help
(see the section <a href="#needhelp">Finding help on validation</a>) and <strong>search the list archives</strong> for existing mail threads on the topic
<strong>before sending any message to the mailing-list</strong>.</p>
<TMPL_IF NAME="errmsg_id">
<p>Judging from the link you followed, you probably want to send feedback on error message [<TMPL_VAR NAME="errmsg_id" ESCAPE="HTML">]: "<TMPL_VAR NAME="explanation" ESCAPE="HTML">".</p>
</TMPL_IF>
<p>Before you send any feedback on error messages, we encourage you to search the archives for existing messages on this error
in case your feedback has already been sent, or answers to
your query have already been given. </p>
<TMPL_IF NAME="errmsg_id">
<p>Below is a pre-filled search box that you can use. Or you can just <a href="http://www.w3.org/Search/Mail/Public/search?type-index=www-validator&index-type=t&keywords=%5BVE%5D%5B<TMPL_VAR NAME="errmsg_id" ESCAPE="URL">%5D&search=Search">follow this link</a>.</p>
</TMPL_IF>
<form method="get" action="http://www.w3.org/Search/Mail/Public/search">
<p>Search the archives of the www-validator mailing-list:<br />
<input id="type-index" name="type-index" type="hidden" value="www-validator" />
<input id="index-type" name="index-type" type="hidden" value="t" />
<TMPL_IF NAME="errmsg_id">
<input id="keywords" name="keywords" type="text" size="33" maxlength="100" value="[VE][<TMPL_VAR NAME="errmsg_id" ESCAPE="HTML">]" />
<TMPL_ELSE>
<input id="keywords" name="keywords" type="text" size="33" maxlength="100" value="" />
</TMPL_IF>
<input type="submit" id="mailsearch" name="search" value="Search Mail Archives" />
</p>
</form>
<p>Once you have checked that your suggestion has not been given yet, you can send your message. To write an efficient message:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Add a meaningful subject line</strong>: summarize your feedback in a handful of words;</li>
<li>If our system added [VE][<TMPL_IF NAME="errmsg_id"><TMPL_VAR NAME="errmsg_id" ESCAPE="HTML"><TMPL_ELSE>XX</TMPL_IF>] at the beginning of the mail subject, keep it.
Otherwise, please precise which error message you are sending feedback about;</li>
<li><strong>Give some context</strong>. Generally speaking, this means <strong>give the URL</strong> of the page you were trying to validate.
The more context you give, the easier it will be for others to understand your problem, question or feedback.
<TMPL_IF NAME="uri">In your case, you should probably mention the URL: <em><TMPL_VAR NAME="uri" ESCAPE="HTML"></em></TMPL_IF></li>
<li><strong>What is your feedback?</strong>. Explain your suggestion, or question, in a clear and informative manner. Be precise and thorough.</li>
</ul>
<p>Once you have checked all the criteria above,
<a href="mailto:www-validator@w3.org?Subject=<TMPL_IF NAME="errmsg_id">%5BVE%5D%5B<TMPL_VAR NAME="errmsg_id" ESCAPE="URL">%5D</TMPL_IF>%20Add%20Subject%20Here&body=%0D%0A<TMPL_IF NAME="uri">Validating%20<TMPL_VAR NAME="uri" ESCAPE="URL">%0D%0A</TMPL_IF><TMPL_IF NAME="errmsg_id">Error%20%5B<TMPL_VAR NAME="errmsg_id" ESCAPE="URL">%5D%3A%20%22<TMPL_VAR NAME="explanation" ESCAPE="URL">%22</TMPL_IF>%0D%0A<TMPL_UNLESS NAME="uri">NOTE%3A%20Whenever%20possible%2C%20give%20the%20address%20of%20the%20document%20you%20were%20checking.</TMPL_UNLESS>">send your message to the www-validator public mailing-list</a>.
</p>
<h3 id="mailinglist">Discuss and participate</h3>
<p>If you are interested in helping to improve this
service, by writing code or just providing ideas, you should feel free to join or send a message to our mailing-list.</p>
<p>
The <strong>public</strong> mailing-list to discuss the Markup Validator, Link checker and other tools is
<a href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-validator/"><code>www-validator</code></a>.
</p>
<p>You can <a title="Send a message to the www-validator-request subscription handler"
href="mailto:www-validator-request@w3.org?Subject=subscribe">subscribe</a> to the list
(and <a title="Send a message to the www-validator-request subscription handler"
href="mailto:www-validator-request@w3.org?Subject=unsubscribe">unsubscribe</a>), or if
you just have a small patch or idea and don't want to join the list, feel
free to <a title="Send a message to the www-validator mailing list"
href="mailto:www-validator@w3.org">send it directly to the list</a>. But whatever you do,
<strong>always use the <a href="http://www.w3.org/Search/Mail/Public/search?index-type=t;type-index=www-validator">mail
search engine</a></strong> first to check for existing messages on a given topic.
</p>
<p>
If you just want to have an informal discussion with developers and users of the Validator,
you may also join the IRC channel #validator on the
<a href="http://freenode.net/using_the_network.shtml">freenode</a> network (irc.freenode.net).
However, please keep in mind that <em>this is not a support channel</em>.
</p>
<h3 id="bugreport">Bug reports</h3>
<p>
The W3C maintains a public bug tracking database known as <a
href="http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/">Bugzilla</a> where developers
and other technical users can log bug reports and feature suggestions
directly. If you are not familiar with issue tracking systems in general
or the Bugzilla bug tracker, send your feedback to the <a href="#mailinglist">mailing list</a>
and someone on the W3C Validator Team will take care of logging your
issue as appropriate.
</p>
<p>Before you enter a new bug in this database, we strongly encourage you to check that it is not yet in the list of opened issues. Here are a few links that you can use:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.w3.org/Bugs/">W3C issue tracking system homepage</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/buglist.cgi?product=Validator;bug_status=NEW;bug_status=ASSIGNED;bug_status=REOPENED;order=bugs.bug_id">All open Markup Validator issues</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/buglist.cgi?product=Validator;order=bugs.bug_id">All Markup Validator issues</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/query.cgi?product=Validator">Search Markup Validator issues</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/enter_bug.cgi?product=Validator">New Markup Validator issue</a></li>
</ul>
<form method="get" action="http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/buglist.cgi">
<p>You may also search the bug database directly:<br />
<input name="short_desc_type" type="hidden" value="allwordssubstr" />
<input name="product" type="hidden" value="Validator" />
<input name="short_desc" id="short_desc" type="text" size="40" maxlength="100" value="" />
<input type="submit" name="search" id="bugsearch" value="Search Bug database" />
</p>
</form>
<p>
If you encounter an HTML 5 related issue in the W3C validator, before
reporting it in the W3C Bugzilla, see if you can reproduce it also with
<a href="http://validator.nu/">Validator.nu</a>. If you can, report
it according to the
<a href="http://about.validator.nu/#reporting-bugs">Validator.nu
bug reporting instructions</a> instead. This inconvenience is because
the W3C validator uses the Validator.nu engine which is developed and
maintained by a different team than the W3C validator to validate HTML 5
documents, and addressing bug reports directly to the team working on the
system in question is likely to result in better and more timely
responses.
</p>
</div>
</div><!-- end of "main" -->
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