The template looks by and large unchanged, as most of the comments were regarding the template document itself and how it was arranged, and less about the entire schema as a separate entity. Based on the team design entry, it looks like the group was interested in removing the “specific topic” element, as it seemed redundant. By the end of the revision process of the elements used in the final version, it is true that the line between the specific element and the “technical principle” element became blurred, but the intention was to have the latter denote a broad concept, and the former to mark a narrow, field-specific piece of information, which appears to be ultimately maintained. Though we considered merging the two, this distinction seemed important enough to ultimately keep the elements separate.
The main concern was with the template/structure of the schema itself, which is not inherently intuitive to an outside user. Our group decided to forgo the creation of a true “template” document simply because we each ordered our elements and formulated our structures a little differently, so we didn’t want to create a template that artificially led users to follow one specific structure/style as opposed to others. What came as a concern from the project 3 individuals, in that they created their documents separately as plain text and then took the schema and marked up their largely already finished work (in terms of content), actually reflected the process we in project 2 took. The way of executing the genre is in some ways backwards to how the other genres were structured, in which it was easier to take the schema and construct the piece directly from that. In the case of the blogs, it was almost by design that the schema was used to tweak an already created piece. The inherent issue with this, which the project 3 group brought up, was that it was difficult to construct the piece and adhere to the schema’s rules if you were not in the group that originally designed it, which in hindsight is perfectly valid. While the schema was meant to serve less as a crutch and more of a way of tagging an already formulated (physically or mentally) piece of writing, this ultimately proved to be somewhat challenging for newcomers to the project/genre.
To be more helpful in the future, I would be in favor of the creation of a template that served as a sample model rather than a list of the elements, but do warn of the potential for the perception that such a document might create artificial perceptual constraints on what is possible within the genre. Ultimately, I feel that in our effort to, by the end, make the schema as forgiving of individuality and as nonrestrictive as possible, we inadvertently created a schema that was perhaps too vague to easily follow.
