[microformats-discuss] Proposing RelSource

[Bud Gibson]

On Jul 12, 2005, at 11:33, Andy Skelton wrote:

> Oops, that was the exact point I was trying to make. I *do* plan to
> adopt and promote rel="cite" but I don't see a need to go through the
> hooplah of defining it as a microformat. Or am I missing something?

I think the point is that the bigger format is not adopted yet and  
may never become a standard.  Therefore, the microformat can encode  
it now with a referenceable place on the web.

Of course, the microformat is now burdened with keeping up with the  
standard as it changes, not just the practices that revolve as a  
result of using the microformatted standard.  Perhaps a minor worry.

>
> As for whether people /should/ indicate primary sources differently
> than non-primary sources, i.e. hat tips, consider the definition of
> the word /cite/:
> "to quote or refer to as a precedent or authority"
> (Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law, (c) 1996 Merriam-Webster, Inc.)
> With that in mind, it would not be incorrect to cite both the primary
> source (authority) and a hat tip or "via" (precedent) with the same
> markup.

Tantek has a good counterexample here.  He adds comment links to his  
post by hand based on them showing up in technorati linking to him.   
Using a time of update heuristic, one could find Tantek's linking to  
comments as placing his post in the chain after people who commented  
on his post.

The example suggests that more structured markup could help.

There is still the question of how you determine the initial source,  
but I am not sure that is really of much practical concern.

The chain of precedence, however, is important for figuring out  
chains of influence for companies who want to influence bloggers.

>
> Robots can construct "citation chains" to discover a likely primary
> source if a standard markup is used. The position of any resource
> relative to Primary on a chain could be of great value to search
> engines. It was this idea that excited me to propose RelSource in the
> first place. I'm just as happy with RelCite.
>