[uf-discuss] Proposal: species

[Tantek Ç elik]

On 9/23/06 10:29 AM, "Scott Reynen" <scott at randomchaos.com> wrote:

>> In fact, I'll wager that they do so far more
>> than they use 8-digit geo-spatial references, but that doesn't stop us
>> using "geo".
> 
> I agree that geo is not currently very widely published on the web,
> and if it were suggested as it's own microformat, it probably
> wouldn't be adopted.

Note from:

http://microformats.org/wiki/geo#Examples_in_the_wild

#  Flickr (http://flickr.com/) now supports the geo microformat
(http://blog.flickr.com/flickrblog/2006/08/great_shot_wher.html) on all
geotagged photos (http://flickr.com/map/). Within 11 days of launch there
are now over 3M+ photos (as of 20060907) marked up with the "geo"
microformat. 

3+ million pages publish geo data in the geo microformat on the Web.  I
think "millions" is sufficient to be considered "very widely", and "geo" was
written up separate from hCard precisely to exist as its own microformat,
and has been adopted.


Andy, one thing that might help for the species discussion is if you could
cite URLs to a site or sites with millions (or even thousands) of clearly
obvious uses of "species" terminology (not just offhanded references like
"human being" or "plant") on pages.  I'm not saying such examples don't
exist, I'm saying we need to explicitly find and cite such examples in order
to justify a microformat.

As with any microformat, the burden of proof is upon us to come up with such
*-examples as Scott has explained.

Simply arguing against abstract negatives (paraphrased: "How does such and
such community function otherwise?") is a waste of time, because without the
documented *-examples, all such arguments are moot.  It doesn't matter how
many arguments against negatives you think you "win".  Absence of negative
is not a justification.

Thanks,

Tantek