[uf-discuss] rel="muse" implies romantic relationship?

[Tantek Ç elik]

On 12/10/06 3:42 PM, "Frances Berriman" <fberriman at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 10/12/06, Jason Garber <jason at sixtwothree.org> wrote:
>> Hi everyone, I'm pretty new to the mailing list, so apologies if this
>> has already been covered.
>> 
>> According to the XFN spec, rel="muse" is a link to someone who inspires
>> you, and is listed as being a "romantic" relationship. I was wondering
>> if it is always implied as a romantic relationship, since one could
>> certainly find someone else inspiring without being romantically
>> involved/interested.
>> 
>> I did a cursory search for anyone/anything that covered this, but
>> couldn't find anything more specific. Does anyone have any input on
>> this? Thanks for your help!
>> 
>> Jason Garber
>> jason at sixtwothree.org
> 
> Hey Jason!
> 
> I actually discussed this with Tantek offlist a while ago, just in
> passing, as I was curious about this also.  I think the decision made
> (by examining uses in the wild) was that muse shouldn't be purely
> romantic, as yes - many people mean it in a platonic way.  I think
> it's something that the XFN documentation could do with clarifying.
> Having it understood as purely romantic is much too restrictive, imho.
> So - use it as you see fit.

Certainly "muse" was not intended to only be purely romantic in the literal
"romantic relationship" sense (though it is clear how that could easily be
misconstrued), and of course that meaning is included.

The categorization as "romantic" is in a broader sense, similar to
romanticism [1] as in enabling the elevation of:

"the achievements of what it [Romanticism] perceived as misunderstood heroic
individuals and artists that altered society."

or romance the genre [2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanticism
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_%28genre%29

That the first specific section in [1] is on music only echoes what Ben West
wrote as well.

Is this worthy of an xfn-faq entry?

Tantek