[uf-discuss] Visible Data...a Microformat requirement?

[Kevin Marks]

On Oct 23, 2006, at 1:11 AM, Mike Schinkel wrote:
> Let me go ahead and give you a hypothetical example (I have had the 
> exact
> problem in the past, so it is a real problem, it's just that explain in
> hypotheical requires less background explanation):
>
> 	http://www.wiki-info.org/platforms/linux/php/
> 	http://www.software-info.org/wikis/platforms/linux/php/
>
> Both those URLs are different and have different "bread crumbs" but
> otherwise the same content.  Search engines do not *know* they are the 
> same,
> but may determine they are similar enough that it will only include 
> one of
> the URLs in it's index (Google frequently did this to us at VBxtras &
> Xtras.Net back when there were two sites.)  However, the search 
> engines may
> choose to include the page from "software-info.org" when I'd rather 
> have him
> include the page from "wiki-info.org" or vice-versa.  So, I would like 
> to be
> able to define in the "software-info.org" page that the wiki-info.org 
> page
> is "content-duplicate" and "authoritative" over the existing page.
> Microformats seem perfect for this, but I can see where website owners 
> may
> not want to make this type of information visible.
>
> So, what if your take on this problem and use-case?

The existing HTML semantic for this is rel="alternate" to say that the 
page is an alternative for the current one. The existing semantic 
rel="bookmark" says that the link is the one to keep - 'permalink' in 
blog parlance.

So in http://www.software-info.org/wikis/platforms/linux/php/ insert:
<a href="http://www.wiki-info.org/platforms/linux/php/" rel="alternate 
bookmark">Definitive link for this page</a>
and on http://www.wiki-info.org/platforms/linux/php/ insert:
<a href="http://www.software-info.org/wikis/platforms/linux/php/" 
rel="alternate">Alternative link for this page</a>

A possibly better way to do this would be to redirect at the HTTP 
level, so http://www.software-info.org/wikis/platforms/ returns a 301 
redirect to http://www.wiki-info.org/platforms/linux/php/

The other pre-existing rel value worth considering is XFN's rel="me", 
as a way of asserting the pages are alternative representations of the 
same thing, but this is really only meant for a page used as a proxy 
for a person.