[uf-discuss] Hidden metadata no microformats

[Scott Reynen]

On Jul 2, 2007, at 3:13 PM, Patrick H. Lauke wrote:

> Benjamin West wrote:
>> http://tantek.com/log/2005/06.html#d03t2359 "Principles of visibility
>> and human friendliness".
>> One question invisible metadata raises is if it's not worth seeing,
>> why is it worth publishing?
>
> Because tools/extensions expose them to end users in a way that is  
> far more user/human friendly than merely making the raw metadata  
> visible. Whether or not authors "forget" to update the metadata, or  
> purposely try to game it, if it's not visible is an authoring/ 
> policy issue, not a technical issue that should be solved by a  
> language's specification ("because some bad people tried to do bad  
> things with it, we're just not giving you the opportunity, full  
> stop").

Microformats are built around an assumption of visibility, so if a  
publisher doesn't want something visible, they probably don't want  
microformats.  It's tempting to argue about the virtues of  
visibility, but I think it's ultimately a waste of everyone's time.   
For those of us who value visible data, there's no shortage already  
out there waiting to have microformats applied.  And for those of us  
who value invisible data, there are other formats better suited to  
that than microformats.

Peace,
Scott