Andy Kirkwood|Motive said: > An interesting application of the technology, although I'm not sure that is addresses how to make it *easier* for administrators to > maintain metadata records.
and > (Assuming the ideal solution would be a wysiwyg editing environment for non-technical content authors.) Andy, I see value in all the points you raise - I'd like to offer some counterpoint. I'm approaching the subject with the idea that metadata is important in order for people to find (related) information at some later time. I think the issue being addressed by Jonathon was not how-to in a WYSIWYG editor, rather that metadata is not front-of-mind when editing an existing resource. The method presents an elegant solution for metadata that is important for an external audience/end users (who wrote it, when, what's it about, what else is there, where am I with regard to related documents), as opposed to the internal management of a collection (similar but slightly or significantly different to the above). > -adding DC class values to <span> elements is not a mark-up behaviour likely to be supported by wysiwyg editors The leading WSIWYG editor can be extended, with much gnashing of the teeth and swearing, to provide this type of functionality. In fact, that is a major selling point. > -administrators will still not entirely 'see' the metadata they've added, as it is the combination of the name and content values that creates a meaningful record, and this would only be visible at a code level I think the opposite. Sure, the finer points of the machine readable part of the record is invisible, but the metadata itself become recognisable patterns that are contained within the document, *are* visible, and not abstracted to another level. How many people do you know who save adequate (any?) metadata with their word documents? Out of sight out of mind. Authors have the opportunity to administer the metadata for their own content in a simple, relevant way. Again, the popular WSYIWYG editor can be extended to help less-savvy people. > -the benefit of metadata is that it can be used to classify content to a significant degree of detail *without encroaching upon the > visible page content itself*. Agreed. Though see my point earlier re: external and internal metadata. >The example provided, < > http://research.talis.com/2005/erdf/wiki/Main/RdfInHtml >, > re-purposes content as metadata. If the content is edited, the record could (unintentionally) be deleted, or the content rewritten to > included the records required I'm missing something here... this reads like an argument in favor of both sides: you can delete the metadata or add it? > -if metadata records are split between the <head> and <body> of a document, review would likely require a greater degree of > concentration/quality assurance and/or additional supporting > technologies (such as a metadata record 'viewer' that would reveal both conventional and class-based records) > -etc. > > A custom-built CMS, as a companion to a well-supported publishing process, is still your best bet. For enterprise sized endevours with a huge budget or significant inhouse savvy, sure. > The metadata records can be entered > at the same time as the content, with values selected from a > controlled vocabulary, etc. and then output either into the <head> or <body> as required. After all, it's more than just the ability to add or edit metadata records, its also the relevance of the values > entered to the content, end-use of the records and the intended > community. One word: Tags. Bottom up, ad-hoc, and eventually convergent labelling seems to have a lot more traction in the wider audience than thesauri, and controlled vocabs. Problem is the latter are usually not revealed to end users, and thus run the risk of being pretty meaningless as a tool to help them find stuff. Of course, the opposite is true in a closed community (i.e where people know the vocab). Lastly, naked metadata will be indexed by (public) search engines, used to determine relevance, and returned in SERP's. kind regards Terrence Wood. ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
