It is a really interesting post Rachel, which I think will touch a lot of people. I personally feel like MS has not only played WASP, but is in the process of trying to play the entire community (yeah, I work for Opera, so I’m biased, I would say that, blah blah…)

But I am very surprised at the way it panned out with the whole ALA announcement any everything.

It does seem like the WASP is suffering from a whole host of issues from different camps, such as apathy, and as you say, unclear direction. It is a lot harder now it isn’t so obvious who the bad guys are.

My personal experience:

1. Myself and my colleague David Storey tried to talk to WaSP about setting up a mobile task force to deal with mobile web development issues, but after afew mails, it just didn’t seem to go anywhere (correct me if I’m wrong.) Have you guys still got that in mind?

2. Back when I worked for friends of ED, I tried to get the ETF to help me tech review and promote an educational text teaching proper web standards development, for universities to use, etc. Stephanie Troeth was very helpful, but the others that said they’d help out ended up being completely non-responsive and therefore stalling the project horribly. I’m doing the same thing now at Opera, but will be releasing it online to use for free. Can I count on the ETF’s help this time? Do they even exist any more? 😉