hCard history and extensions (was Re: [uf-discuss] Date ofDeath in hCard)

[Montgomery, Mike]

I was under the impression that the purpose of hCard was to provide a way to markup individual and organizational contact information.  If this is the case, does date of death make sense to include?  In general, I don't need to contact someone who is no longer living.  

The original example that was given for a use case for including date of death was in marking up genealogical information.  Is this information truly contact information or is it biographical information?

If I'm wrong in the assumption that hCard is only for contact information, please let me know.  It seems that the specification was created for this purpose but is being applied to other purposes (which I guess isn't necessarily a bad thing).

-----Original Message-----
From: microformats-discuss-bounces at microformats.org [mailto:microformats-discuss-bounces at microformats.org] On Behalf Of Andy Mabbett
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2007 2:11 PM
To: Microformats Discuss
Subject: Re: hCard history and extensions (was Re: [uf-discuss] Date ofDeath in hCard)

In message <C2A93EEF.912A0%tantek at cs.stanford.edu>, Tantek Çelik 
<tantek at cs.stanford.edu> writes

>For some of these I see quite a bit of utility (e.g. "gender" is often 
>used in social network searches - an actual application in common use), 
>whereas others seem to be merely driven by sense of semantic publishing 
>completeness (e.g. date of death) and not by existing applications.

On the contrary; you have been presented with evidence *and* use cases 
for date-of-death more than once; not least in the first post in this 
thread.

>Finally, any time you find yourself (or anyone else) arguing a positive 
>from the absence of a negative, please call it out as a logical flaw.
>
>I.e. statements of the form:
>
>"I can see no good reason why ABC
> should stop XYZ"
>
>... do not provide justification for XYZ.

Allow me to correct myself:

The justification for the hCard on that page including his date of death 
(and places of birth and death, for that matter) is not negated by the 
historical, almost accidental, relationship of hCard with vCard.

-- 
Andy Mabbett

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