[uf-discuss] cite/citation examples/formats/brainstorming

[Tantek Ç elik]

Hi Ryan,

On 12/20/05 12:56 PM, "Ryan Cannon" <ryan at ryancannon.com> wrote:

> Greetings,
> 
> I've actually been looking at this problem from another angle, and
> considered submitting a microformat about it. What we're really
> looking for is not solely citation data (such as ISBN), but
> bibliographic information.

Yes.

> Perhaps a good method for starting is to
> break down the relevant information from accepted academic
> bibliography formats (MLA, APA, Chicago) and synthesize proper class
> names based on that data.

If there was wide interoperability of one particular academic bibliographic
format, then yes, that basing a microformat on that one academic
bibliographic format would be a reasonable route to take. (e.g. as we did
with vCard for hCard).

However, there are a plethora of citation formats, most of which could be
criticized as being drastically overdesigned/overengineered for the 80/20
case of what people actually publish on the Web.

So before jumping to format analysis, the first thing to do, per the
microformats process:

 http://microformats.org/wiki/process
 
...is to research and document more real world *examples* of people posting
actual citation *content* on the Web, visibly, intended for human
consumption.

 http://microformats.org/wiki/cite-examples

So far we have only two sets of examples listed, a few more would be good,
along with the analysis of the implicit schemas illustrated by each content
example.

Once we have a good idea what the 80/20 is of actual citation related fields
used in actual citation examples published on the web, then we can take a
analyze existing formats (and please add to this page if you know of more):

 http://microformats.org/wiki/cite-formats

...to see how drastically we should subset them and brainstorm a straw
microformat accordingly in the cite-brainstorming page:

 http://microformats.org/wiki/cite-brainstorming

Thanks,

Tantek