[uf-discuss] xfolk: tags that aren't links

[Bud Gibson]

At one point in time, I considered having non-link tags, but that  
just does not work in a distributed system.  You need some sort of  
context in which to interpret the tag when tags are coming from all  
over.

In systems where tags are not links, there is always the implicit  
assumption that tags are to be interpreted in the context of the  
system where you find them.  That is certainly the case in  
del.icio.us and flickr.

I also perceived a considerable advantage in joining forces with by  
far the most widely adopted tagging standard, reltag.  You should too.

Bud
On Jan 1, 2006, at 22:36, Tantek Çelik wrote:

> On 1/1/06 7:26 PM, "Ryan King" <ryan at technorati.com> wrote:
>
>> On Jan 1, 2006, at 7:19 PM, Angus McIntyre wrote:
>>
>>> The current spec for the xfolk microformat allows the inclusion of
>>> tags in a format like:
>>>
>>> <div class="meta">
>>>    <a rel="tag" href="/foo">foo</a>,
>>>    <a rel="tag" href="/bar">bar</a> ...
>>> </div>
>>>
>>> This assumes that tags will always be linked to some other object.
>>> However, this isn't necessarily the case: I could imagine cases
>>> where a webmaster might want to
>
> *Imagining* cases is insufficient to be considered for microformats.
>
> Actual substantial real-world empirical use cases are required.
>
>>> provide a list of keywords
>>> associated with a link, but without linking those keywords (tags)
>>> to anything else.
>>
>> This was a deliberate design decision in rel-tag, which has been
>> covered before on this list.
>
> What Ryan is saying is that tags without links have been considered  
> and
> rejected long ago.
>
> Kevin, I have a feeling you have a longer more detailed explanation  
> of why
> requiring tag-spaces are a good thing.
>
> Perhaps you could start a rel-tag FAQ and add that info there:
>
>  http://microformats.org/wiki/rel-tag-faq
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tantek
>
> _______________________________________________
> microformats-discuss mailing list
> microformats-discuss at microformats.org
> http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
>