On 3/30/06, Tim White <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I understand the desire to capture "type" metadata - I wanted to
> include it for the longest time. But - from a microformats point of
> view - we have to keep two things in mind:
>
> 1) Humans first, machines second.
At what point does this become mere dogma? It sounds like what you're
advocating in fact suggests "human first, who cares about machines";
as if the one can't support the other in any case.
I can't agree with Bruce enough on this. If it's easy to include, would enable more functionality, but is not intended for display purposes, what is the harm? Having an arbitrary line drawn in the sand serves no purpose and will be problematic in the future.
> This means keeping everything visible, not trapped in metadata. If you
> really want to note that it's a photo then include that:
You know, this refrain keeps popping up and I'm just not buying it. hCard has a non-displaying 'tel' span (which would be similar to the 'journal|book|photograph|etc' we're discussing here.
"Vote Links" has non-displaying metadata. XOXO as well.
> 2) "Adapted to current behaviors and usage patterns."
> Microformats are suppose to be modeled on what people are currently
> doing (80/20) on the web. I think of it in terms of the Everyman/woman.
"Everyman/woman" has no idea what microformats are.
Not only that, I think it's completely off-base as to where your 80/20 are! If you look at the /vast/ majority of citations that are available via HTML, they are /are not/ from Everyman/woman and frankly never would or could be. Think of the potential of Google Scholar or Scirus or MSN's upcoming Academic Live Search (esp. since, you know, MS invented microformats and everything ;) if they adopted microformats and there are actual things you could do with each citation result.
The potential of that is so much greater than any benefit of keeping it confined to book reviews in blogs and CVs (although both can and should be acheived).
In fact, I am meeting with MS about the Academic Live Search in a couple of weeks to talk about, among other things, the possibility of including COinS or mfs in their results.
While I agree, that unneeded complexity or overanalysis of use cases is bad and should be avoided, making this good and useful and for more than just hobbyists is critical at this point.
-Ross.
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