[uf-discuss] Problem with VoteLinks?

[Brian Suda]

On 6/7/07, Costello, Roger L. <costello at mitre.org> wrote:
> Hey Brian,
>
> I interpreted the specification:
>
> "Additional human-readable commentary can be added using the existing
> 'title' attribute, which most browsers show as a rollover."
>
> To mean: provide a human-readable commentary on why you voted the way
> you did.  In other words, the rationale for why you voted the way you
> did.

--- i'm not the author or editor of that spec, so i don't want to put
words in their mouths, but i think there are issues with your
intrepretation.

your original argument was about voting RATIONALE:

... "As noted above, the rationale for a vote is in the title attribute."...

... "But the typical cow path for which VoteLinks is intended to address
does not hide the rationale for a vote.  Consider a BLOG comment: the
rationale for the positive or negative comment is openly displayed." ...

..."The rationale for a vote should be visible to humans."...

i would agree that the RATIONALE, if used as data should be human
readable, but the spec clearly says NOT rationale, but COMMENTARY. The
title attribute contains COMMENARY, not RATIONALE. We can argue the
semantics of that, but it is up to the original authors.

> I interpreted the specification:
>
> "Additional human-readable commentary can be added using the existing
> 'title' attribute, which most browsers show as a rollover."
>
> To mean: provide a human-readable commentary on why you voted the way
> you did.  In other words, the rationale for why you voted the way you
> did.

I don't thing there is much to "inpreprate" from that one line of the
spec, i think it is pretty explaintory. In your meaning you agree that
it is commentary, and not rationale.

I think those are two different things and a believe that if you are
wanting to expose a rationale as data to be consumed by other
applications, then you need more than vote-links. hReview fits this
nicely.

Vote-links was only ment to be an elemental microformat doing nothing
more than one thing, exposing a vote for a link. When combined with
other formats it enchances them and gives them additional semantics.

-brian

-- 
brian suda
http://suda.co.uk