looking for patterns vs. dreaming up patterns (was Re: ecommerce was Re: [uf-discuss] Principles of Microformats?)

[Benjamin West]

On 12/21/06, Tantek Çelik <tantek at cs.stanford.edu> wrote:
> I'm not sure who originally wrote:

I did.

> Others skip the collecting examples (data) step and simply dream up patterns
> based on their intuition (or "expertise") - perhaps that is what you mean by
> "allowing myself to look for patterns".

It was based on an IRC conversation,
<http://rbach.priv.at/Microformats-IRC/2006-10-28#T222748>,
<http://rbach.priv.at/Microformats-IRC/2006-11-15#T223713>.

> That non-scientific technique has been tried in many (most) standards and
> results more often than not in bloated overly complex (certainly not
> "micro") standards.  There are exceptions, where an individual with
> exceptional discipline and near obsession with simplicity makes something
> small and elegant, but they are the exception, not the rule.
>
I'm not using this hypothesis to synthesize new standards.  It's just
something I've been thinking about, and am looking for evidence to
test it.  It is as basic a question as why some technology seems to
work and some doesn't.

>  http://microformats.org/wiki/why-examples

This is nice.

Thanks,
Ben