[uf-discuss] Micro Summary

[Tantek Ç elik]

On 8/7/07 8:19 AM, "Paul Kinlan" <paul.kinlan at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> I am working on a site that aggregates updates to websites
> (http://www.topicala.com/popular - it is parsing rel-tag at the
> moment).  It is working well (as a hack at the moment), I would like
> to include some summary information about the sites that I am
> aggregating.
> 
> I am thinking of using "META description" for now (but I am not sure
> of the quality of data in the tag),

http://microformats.org/wiki/page-summary-formats#Meta_description


> however, I have been looking at
> micro-summary (http://microformats.org/wiki/microsummary-brainstorming).
> Is this topic still alive?  Has anyone been developing this?  Are
> there any other similar developments (that I have missed)?

Thanks for the heads up.  That topic (aside from being prematurely named
with a buzzword) has been quite dead for a while in addition to not
following the microformats process to begin with.

I've tried to clean-up and collect the bits of research around it that had
been done here:

 http://microformats.org/wiki/page-summary

> If not, how can I help? Having micro summaries  would solve part of a
> problem that I am having (other than what I suspect is lack of useage
> at the moment).

Lack of usage is a *big* problem.  If you can't find examples in the wild
(though I think you probably could), then it's not worth pursuing a
page-summary microformat.

If you want to help develop a page summary microformat, I'd say the first
things to do would be to:

1. make your site (http://www.topicala.com/popular/) POSH:
  * http://microformats.org/wiki/posh
2. add microformats to your site:
  * http://microformats.org/wiki/get-started
3. follow the microformats process for page-summary:
  * http://microformats.org/wiki/process

Steps 1 and 2 will better help you familiarize yourself with how POSH and
microformats currently work - that "real world" experience will greatly help
you with the development a new microformat.

Tantek