[microformats-discuss] hReview should include a way to specify Author

[brian suda]

Microformats wiki has a section for a citation format, it is slowly
coming along, books are part of what can be cited. So it is conceivable
to put a citation microformat insite an hReview

http://www.microformats.org/wiki/cite

-brian

Tantek Çelik wrote:

>Hi Chris,
>
>On 9/19/05 1:22 PM, "Chris Hibbert" <chris at commerce.net> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>I added this question to the FAQ, but no one has responded there, so
>>I'll ask the mailing list.
>>    
>>
>
>Thanks!
>
>
>  
>
>>I've been formatting my book reviews (http://pancrit.org) using the
>>hReview microformat, but there hasn't been any obvious way to tag the
>>authors of the works.
>>    
>>
>
>Right, there is no explicit way in hReview to describe details about an item
>except where the item maps directly to something described by an existing
>microformat, e.g. people/companies -> hCard, events -> hCalendar, and
>details which were found to be common across 80+% of reviews, e.g. name,
>url(s), photo(s) of the item.
>
>This is deliberate.
>
>One of the key principles of microformats is modularity.
>
>Hence, hReview MUST NOT define little specific sub-formats (or properties)
>for each type of item that could possibly be reviewed.
>
>Instead, hReview will refer to, where they are available, make sense, and
>sufficiently "mature", other microformats that provide details about the
>item, for reviews that wish to describe details about the item.
>
>  
>
>>I understand that hReview was trying to be more
>>general, and therefore to cover product reviews, movies, restaurants,
>>and so on, where there isn't an obvious author.  But I would have
>>thought that book reviews were an important enough subset that allowing
>>people to specify the author in a searchable way would be important.
>>    
>>
>
>It is this precisely, that is, judging what is "important enough" which is
>often very challenging.
>
>Do you have URLs to sites that publish book reviews above and beyond other
>types of reviews in general?
>
>
>  
>
>>How hard would it be to add an optional "author" tag?
>>
>>What are the 
>>arguments against adding this useful marker?
>>    
>>
>
>Adding such a "tag" to hReview would not be difficult.  But where do you
>stop?
>
>E.g. adding such a "tag" would violate several microformat principles.
> * Solve a specific problem (reviews), rather than many problems.
> * Keep it simple.  Specifying authors of the items being reviewed is not
>necessary (nor widely in use) for reviews.
> * Modular.  See above.
>
>This really gets at the core of microformats design principles.
>
>If you believe there is a need to structure information about books (which
>is really what you are saying when you want to discuss authors about the
>books which are you reviewing), then by all I means, I encourage you to
>start researching how people talk about books on the web (whether in reviews
>or elsewhere), and what information about books they publish, and
>documenting your results in a "book-examples" page on the wiki:
>
> http://microformats.org/wiki/book-info-examples
>
>Then the next step would be to do some research in what formats are
>currently used to describe information about books, and document that
>research on a book-info-formats page:
>
> http://microformats.org/wiki/book-info-formats
>
>If there is enough utility/interest, then perhaps you can help develop a new
>microformat for book-info, which hReview could then suggest reviewers use
>when reviewing books.
>
>Looking forward to seeing what you come up with!
>
>Thanks,
>
>Tantek
>
>
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>  
>