[uf-discuss] Bioformats - microformats for biology

[lists at ben-ward.co.uk]

On Fri, 23 Jan 2009 20:18:19 +0000, "André Luís" <andr3.pt at gmail.com>
said:

> Why is this being developed outside of this community? Has anyone
> heard of this before and/or have contacted the founders of this
> project?

This community very intentionally doesn't try create specifications for
everything. Previous pure-science efforts such as species died because
it fell way outside the area of active interest of most of this
community's participants. People are volunteers, their time is precious
and when you choose what you're going to contribute too, you're not
going to choose a subject matter you're not interested in. As such,
communities of different demographics and core interest are inevitable.
Microformats.org probably has a very social-web and mass-publishing
bias, their group will have different goals.

Now, I would say that I stand by the idea that our development process
would aid anyone in producing better quality formats in the end, but we
mustn't forget that microformats.org doesn't “own” the class
attribute. If someone doesn't like how we work, or doesn't want to
integrate a complex alien subject matter into our community that's their
right.

Now, the one notable issue here is that ‘bioformats’ are *not*
microformats as they claim. Otherwise, what they do is up to them. I
personally don't know anyone involved. If anyone does and wants to make
contact on behalf of the community to ask clarification on their use of
‘microformats’ that would be appreciated.

Oh, and as an aside, this ‘poshformats’ thing will never catch on.
End of the day, we're all making patterns of HTML, no need to apply
silly branding. I'm not sure the concept should be presented like this
on the wiki, but that's a job for a less busy day.

Ben

> I guess they should read the http://microformats.org/wiki/poshformats
> page... I see no documentation of discussion nor any study of examples
> in the wild.
> 
> Bottom line is.. should we care about this? Try to invite them to join
> the community and discuss the pros and cons of their proposals? Or
> just leave them be?
> 
> Cheers,
> André Luís
> 
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