Just tag it. (was Re: [uf-discuss] "parental guidance" Microformat?)

Tantek Ç elik tantek at cs.stanford.edu
Fri Dec 23 12:58:23 PST 2005


On 12/23/05 6:04 AM, "Frederic de Villamil" <neuro at 7el.net> wrote:

> Hi list,
> I was lately thinking about a way to tell the most accurate way that a
> link points to a page with content not suitable for people under a
> certain age, such as porn, violence...

What subjects are suitable or not for people of what age differs greatly
across both different cultures in the same time (e.g. in the present), and
the same culture across different times.


> the list should be long.

And for that reason, there shouldn't be a precise list, or taxonomy,
certainly not developed by the microformats community.

For such lists, it is much preferable to use a folksonomy, or simple tags
that each individual in the community applies in their own determination.


> I've been thinking about vote-links, and I'm wondering why we could not
> use rev="pg13" or rev="pg16" in links the way we use vote-for and
> vote-against in vote links.
>
> It would give something like this:
> <a href="http://www.example.com" rev="pg13" title="not suitable for
> people under 13">some page</a>

An effectively identical proposal, rel="xxx" has been proposed and rejected,
please see the archives.

Also, please see the rel-faq which also discusses rev.  This proposal is an
incorrect use of rev.

 http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-faq

In short, rev="vote-for" means the current page is a "vote-for" the
referenced page.

Whereas, it makes no sense to say that the current page is a "pg13" for the
referenced page.


The short answer is, rather than jumping to using a rel or rev value, first
describe what you are trying to do, and then the answer is fairly
straightforward.


My understanding of what you are trying to do is this:


Enable any author on the web to associate one or more keywords pertaining to
aspects of content with a url associated with that content.


As with the rejection of rel="xxx", there is no need to specify a new
specific microformat with specific keywords or tags for this.


The right answer here is to use either xFolk and/or hReview to tag and/or
review the content in question, using whatever tags you want to use.

 http://microformats.org/wiki/xfolk

 http://microformats.org/wiki/hreview

If you want to use the precise meaning of tags or keywords defined by a
particular authority, then you need a URL tagspace for those precise
meanings, as defined in the rel-tag standard.

 http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-tag


Thanks,

Tantek



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