[uf-discuss] Employee number

[Ryan King]

On Sep 25, 2006, at 6:21 AM, Paul Denning wrote:

> At 04:29 PM 2006-09-19, Ryan King wrote:
>> Create your own
>> standard markup
>
> If I create my own, then it may be "my" standard, but its a far cry  
> from being a widespread or universal standard.

I know. Jumping from no practice to "universal standard" is not a way  
to create a good format.

> I am not in the group in my company that develops the applications  
> that use employee numbers.  I am a user of those applications.  I  
> may develop a bookmarklet that can make it easier to use the  
> services that they make available.
>
> If I suggest to them that they add something like
>
> <abbr class="employeeid" title="12345">12345</abbr>
>
> to all pages that display the employee number, they are more likely  
> to make the change if I say that this is a microformat that is  
> being used across many industries as defined on http:// 
> microformats.org .

This sounds like a hypothetical. Have you asked or not?

> I don't think any old use of the patterns [1] should be considered  
> a "microformat".  To be considered a "microformat", use of these  
> patterns [1] should be vetted through a process [2] to gain  
> widespread appeal.

I proposed earlier that you create your own format for use inside  
your own company. In that situation, why does it matter if the format  
you're using is in any external sense a microformat?

At Technorati, we have all sorts of internal APIs and formats which  
we've completely made up. The fact that no outside body has endorsed  
them doesn't make them any less useful.

-ryan