[uf-discuss] awesome examples of microformats, faqs

[Chris Messina]

Tantek, thanks for making turning my comments into something more
positive. I apologize if I came off as overly negative -- a little
competition is a good thing I think -- kind of like the Yankess and
the Red Sox... and well, I still root for the hometeam. But that's
just me.

Responses inline.

> On 5/8/06 12:29 AM, "Chris Messina" <chris.messina at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I think it's really time that we started having some awesome examples
> > of microformats in use.
>
> Chris, check out the "Implementations" and "Examples in the Wild" sections
> of the specifications -- there are tons of awesome examples of microformats
> in use.
>
> Perhaps what we need is a better summary or navigability of this
> information, because if you have the (seemingly inaccurate) impression that
> we need to "start" having examples, then clearly others may as well.
>
> The lack of awesome examples and implementations is not the problem.


Ok, I think you nail it here:

> The stories are right there, linked directly from the specs, you just need
> to take the time to click on them and read through.

This is backwards. The stories should link to the specs, not the other
way around. I think this is what I've been intuitively feeling for a
long time -- and a great deal of the inspiration for opening the
separate Practical Microformats wiki (microformats.pbwiki.com). I want
this for Microformats.org:

http://rubyonrails.org/

They do a great job hyping, promoting and marketing their great
project. I think that we have something equally profound and useful on
our hands, but we're totally inaccessible save for the few who dare to
brave the depths of the wiki. This needs to change -- and can be done
fairly easily with some focused effort.

I was really attracted to Dan Cederholm's design, but I think it's
gone a bit stale -- it's time for a refresh, and as we've discussed,
there's no better time than leading up to the 1-year anniversary of
microformats. Perhaps a celebration of all that's happened and been
achieved (and implemented) is in order, eh?

And do note that it's not so much that I don't believe that there
aren't a great number of microformat implementations and examples --
it's that they don't roll off my tongue naturally. It's that we don't
have enough scripts, screencasts or sites that are integrated together
and collected in one place to show off the power of microformats. I
mean, heck, even smashing up Eventful, Upcoming and Meetup.com on a
Google map might be enough of a start.

If I were to make my comments more constructive, I would suggest that
we need more public success stories -- and to get our story out there
to wider audiences. I have no doubt that the better technology will
gain traction as it should, but I feel like we deserve to have our
good works recognized (especially you Tantek), so if I get a little
uppity from time to time when other solutions get attention and we
don't, well, just ignore me and know that it's because there's I've
got no derth of enthusiasm for microformats. Or something.

;)

Chris
Chris