There are so many voices shouting at once around this issue. I’ve resisted blogging about it myself having decided that being one more echo of the ‘WTF’ variety is probably less helpful.

The fallout of this situation is pretty bleak, but rescuable I think, if those involved are able to put the time in.

I have to say, Rachel, I share the sentiment about WaSP being played by Microsoft. I can’t bring myself to believe that something so malicious and vile was intentionally planned by anyone inside that organisation, but the way X-UA has been communicated is, regardless of intent, extremely manipulative of the web standards community.

• Microsoft’s own announcement praises and credits the entire Web Standards project for the outcome. I felt desperately uncomfortable reading it, effectively seeing the blame shifted, or credibility sought through name association.

• Similarly, the ALA article presents the HTTP header solution as something that’s wonderful for the web, solves our web developer’s problems, and that everything would be great if the other browsers did it too. It’s just outright misleading, dodging the truth that this is a problem of Microsoft’s own making.

The problems with those miscommunications are separate from this, though. The damage to the reputation of WaSP (and ALA) is done. It’s stirred up interest, and for all the bull, it’s highlighted legitimate problems that WaSP has to solve too (albeit often in the wrong tone, such is Zeldman’s want).

WaSP should survive, but needs to better communicate that the work it does now is smaller scale, that’s not guerilla warfare anymore. And then, there’ve got to be updates. Status. Which as I too well know, is desperately hard to provide reliably in a volunteer organisation. But somehow, it needs to happen. People can see little logs of what a TF is attempting to do. Maybe they should have Twitter accounts.

Also, almost from a presentational point of view, where TFs exist under NDA, that should be clear. Where something like the the Microsoft TF is deployed with no means of reporting back, it has to be put across differently from a group that is able to operate in the open. Maybe it’s management of expectations, but if now or in future WaSP sends a group of ninjas behind enemy lines under the cover of darkn… NDA… then followers of WaSP need to understand straight off that any results do not immediately represent the group, but that group endorsement will follow, promptly, where appropriate.

If you can only be as open as printing the words ‘Sorry, we cannot be open’ on the TF, then it should still be done.

If the people required know they can commit to it, then it’s probably a moment for WaSP to stand up, hold up its hands for being too quiet, then take a deep breath, state what it is doing right now, and then try to maintain it, and the communications. What’s gone wrong can’t necessarily be undone or resolved, so just acknowledge it, and then walk forwards.

Once people know for sure what the WaSP is actively doing, they’ll be in a better position to say what it should be doing.