[microformats-discuss] what gets pruned/closed, making existing web data useful

[Tantek Ç elik]

On 7/13/05 5:15 AM, "Danny Ayers" <danny.ayers at gmail.com> wrote:

> Forgive me, I misinterpreted the word "discuss" in the mailing list
> name.


Not at all.  There are tons of things for us to discuss!

However, there are topics where discussion is counterproductive and/or a
waste of time (I have sufficient experience on W3C and other standards
mailing lists to make this observation).  Some topics are don't have the
necessary cost/benefit to be worth discussing, and thus I will be doing some
amount of pruning as necessary to keep this list as productive as possible.


> I personally believe that there is a lot of potential for
> cross-fertilization between efforts like Atom, the Semantic Web
> initiative and microformats.

Agreed.


> These projects have at least one goal in
> common: putting more useful data on the Web.

Sort of.  There is actually a very key distinction here in the microformats
approach that sets a different approach.

Microformats are much more about:

 Making the data that people *are already publishing* on the *web* more
useful.

Rather than:

 Putting more useful data on the web.

That's a fine distinction, but a very important one that focuses our
efforts.


> Whatever, if the attitude
> around microformats is to not-invented-here, it's not a big deal.

Not at all.  It is the opposite in fact.

Another way of of rephrasing the principle of maximum reuse is
the principles of minimum invention.

However, simplicity will not be sacrificed.

Therefore, something that is complex will be simplified rather than adopted.

I hope that clarifies the pruning actions taken.  I really don't intend to
do that very often.

There are some very specific rathole topics that don't benefit us at all to
discuss, and when those come up, I will close discussion on those topics.

Thanks,

Tantek