Thanks for the detailed response.
I do feel it’s possible to get closer to an accurate count of UV’s but that is a whole different story.

What I mean is as you point out the tool-to-tool differences and I think this was what Brandt was also alluding to in his somewhat blunt way.

By creating a roadmap for the tools to develop towards the WAA sets the agenda. By giving the tools precise definitions to work towards the tool differences come closer together.

By designing something like this an opportunity exists to become an auditing body which could also bring in revenue for the WAA.

I find the accusation “dumped without formal process” to be incredible. There’s not a single definition in the document that didn’t incur exhaustive discussion and review by the whole committee, and final approval for any definition took place over two meetings so anyone who missed the preliminary approval meeting still had a chance to speak up. The lively discussions (and occasional arguments) over the terms is one of the reasons that the document took so long to create, and it’s one of the reasons that I’m proud of the outcome. We have read your recent criticisms and they will also go into the pot for our future discussions. After all, we did ask for feedback and we are obligated to consider the bad as well as the good.

On a committee, everyone gets to share their opinion, but not everyone will get their way (including me). It’s an amazingly democratic process, and we have members with a wide range of experience. Not everyone buys/sells advertising, so specifications aimed at the advertising world simply aren’t relevant to everyone. We would never suggest that an analyst or tool should not comply to JICWEBS or IAB specs if they are relevant to their business, but our audience for WAA Standards is the web analytics practitioner, not the ad buyer or seller. It amazes me that so many people can’t see the distinction. There is overlap, yes, but the focus of the web analytics practitioner is to understand visitor behavior on a website, to improve both the visitor experience and the goals of the business. And we purposely wrote the definitions in such a way that the average marketing professional can understand them.

Steve, the industry is very young indeed, and the Standards Committee is working towards more this-is-how-it’s done specs (that’ll be in v3 of the doc, not the final release of the 9/22 one). There are going to be diminishing returns on precision, and we need to find out where is the turning point. However “precise” we calculate a metric, it still isn’t “accurate” because of cookie-deletion and other issues. Granted, we do want to eliminate as much of the tool-to-tool calculation differences as possible so we don’t add insult to injury. But we need to balance changing the old metrics, with getting ahead of the curve with some of the newer metrics, as we are attempting to do with our Social Media Subcommittee.

angie

That said if you have written standards yourself it may be that the community can use them. I would urge that you produce them. Your recent article has at least raised an issue of importance.

If they are made publicly available and as open to criticism as any other document (such as the current standards are) then no-one can argue with your stance.

If you read carefully I actually never accused you of doing nothing. I challenged you to fix the situation which you have yet to do. I accused you of being a keyboard warrior which I defined as someone who writes rhetoric in a confrontational manner simply to be noticed. I have no intention of withdrawing that statement until you prove otherwise.