[uf-discuss] "authoritative hCards", a simpler proposl

[Ara Pehlivanian]

On 3/4/07, John Allsopp <john at westciv.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
>   Mike Schinkel wrote:
>
> > Ryan King wrote:
> >> Catching up in the last few days, I find that there are some
> >> probelems with the "authoritative hcards" proposals. I'
> >>
> >> <snip>
> >>
> >> My proposal is that we use UID+URL to hint that there's an
> >> hCard on the other end of that URL which represents the same
> >> entity. Also, multiple hCards with the same UID may be
> >> considered as representing the same entity.
> >
> > In reviewing this I can't help but feel that I don't understand the
> > use-case
> > or the desired outcome.  Will someone kindly explain?  Is it that
> > there
> > could be hundreds of hCards on the web for Ryan King (the one for
> > the guy
> > who has the email address of [ryan at technorati.com]) but only one
> > should be
> > considered 'authoritative?"
>
> A number of somewhat overlapping suggestions seem to be floating
> around regarding this.
>
> There is definitely a strong use case, IMO, for somehow indicating
> that some hCard over there is a more detailed version of this one.
>
> For example, at the various conference sites I am involved wiht, we
> mark up all speakers using hCard. Ofen it's simply
>
> <span class="vCard"><a href="http://johnfallsopp.com" class="url
> fn">John Allsopp</a>
>
> Now, if this could point at an hCard with more information about the
> speaker so marked up, to me that would be potentially very useful for
> something like Tails or Operator to pull in that additional
> information, or for aggregating references to the same person and on.
>
> As to definitiveness or authoriativeness, I think that's a tougher
> nut to crack.
>
> j
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Maybe the problem is that we're trying to point to an authoratative
hCard when in reality what we want to do is simply (like you just
said) point to a more detailed hCard. That way, if you have a
professional hCard set up on your work site you might want to point to
that from your conference listing page, but if you have a personal one
set up as well you might want to point to IT from a personal site
somewhere. Managing "authoritative" relationships between cards seems
to be more hassle than it's worth. Simply pointing to a more detailed
card could be the solution.

So for example, the rule could simply be that the anchor with
class="url" found inside the hCard will point to a more detailed hCard
should it have a direct reference to an ID. In other words the
following example would be pointing to a more detailed hCard:

<span class="vCard"><a href="http://johnfallsopp.com/about/#myInfo" class="url
fn">John Allsopp</a>

The moment the ID is provided, it indicates that the link isn't just
pointing to any old resource on the web, but that it is in fact
pointing to a more detailed hCard.

The only problem that I can see with this model is that you might not
want your hyperlink dropping to the hCard's location when it's
clicked.

A.