[uf-discuss] [Zen of Microformats] Two Fundamental Principles of Information Design

[Kevin Marks]

On Mar 8, 2007, at 11:08 AM, Danny Ayers wrote:

> For example, <div class="family-name">Novak<div> etc. might work fine,
> but imagine you later discover an established practice amongst
> biologists: <div class="family-name">Microhylidae</div>. Turns out
> their existing systems consider your Costellos, Novaks and Smiths as a
> classification term, alongside Narrow-mouthed frogs.

As their systems are astronomically unlikely to have wrapped their  
taxa in a vcard class, there is no clash.

Can you stop just making stuff up and pretending this is a problem  
please?

> It's taking the responsibility locally by saying:
>
> 'we're ok to create a convention using class="family-name" because we
> have mechanisms in place that mean other people aren't prevented from
> using it for their own purposes'

Yes, wrapping it in a container class deliberately chosen to be rare.

> In HTML, profile URIs are such a mechanism, and preempt such problems.
>
> An additional benefit is that they use the web to good effect - the
> URI can be dereferenced and further information obtained.

Profile URIs can be used to do that, or as you illustrated, they can  
be used to cause problems.