To the extent that there is such a thing as an XML community, it's found
at a few conferences and on the xml-dev mailing list.
Like many electronic communities,
xml-dev suffers from a few tedious permathreads, from regular
childish ranting, and from side-trips into the abstruse.
But if you ask a hard technical question on XML there, you'll probably get an
answer, almost immediately.
The problem is that the mailing list is
mismanaged, broken, unreliable, inaccessible,
and really ought to find a new home with competent grownup minders.
I have just been silently dumped off the list membership for the second time in the last year. I went to check the list archive to make sure that it wasn't just an extended quiet spell, except for the list archive is broken. I tried to re-subscribe, but I got an air-headed error message and no response.
This kind of egregious stupidity has been going on for years.
I'm not going to dignify the organization that allegedly runs
xml-dev by naming them here, but if someone in the community
who's reasonably neutral and had the resources wanted to stick up their hand
and offer to host the mailing list, I'd be delighted to help with
the migration.
