[uf-discuss] Microformats for Q&A sites

[Angelo Gladding]

> For example, a question page (that also shows related answers) will be a series of CLASS="hentry" elements. Some other elements that work well: entry-title, entry-content, rel=tag, published and author.

To clarify, hAtom [1] specifies a standard for episodic content.
`hentry` is, in a sense, on par with `entry-title`, `entry-content`,
and the others. `hentry` alone is normatively meaningless without the
specified required properties — check out the cheatsheet [2] for a
quick reference if you haven't already.

[1]: http://microformats.org/wiki/hatom
[2]: http://microformats.org/wiki/hatom-cheatsheet

> But there are a bunch of things that I want to make semantically available to machine readers that don't seem to touch on any of the microformat standards. ... I *could* start making elements up and modifying pages in the wiki, but I feel I should be treading more lightly until I become more familiar with microformat culture and practice.

Read the process [3] first if you haven't already.

[3]: http://microformats.org/wiki/process

> For example: (a) to denote that a particular hentry is a question or an answer, (b) to flag one particular answer as the one that was selected as the best, (c) to show the net total of votes (any +/- integer) received by a question or answer.

Check out the Q&A brainstorming [4], contribute in that dimly lit
corner, and elicit feedback here rather than poking at hAtom's spec.
Also consider using vote-links [5] via fragment identifiers. Confirm
the feasibility of that method via the spec. "Best" and "total"
shouldn't be too difficult to determine algorithmically once votes are
represented.

[4]: http://microformats.org/wiki/question-answer-brainstorming
[5]: http://microformats.org/wiki/vote-links

Lastly, mark up your home page with a representative hCard [6] and a
`rel-me` to your LinkedIn. Then implement the hAtom (and associated
hCard) semantics on said Q&A pages and do similar for the user pages,
validate everything, and don't hesitate to come back with questions or
feedback related to non-standard pursuits.

[6]: http://microformats.org/wiki/representative-hcard

If you'd like to contact me privately I'd be very interested in
further discussing decentralized aggregation. I have recently sent a
yet to be answered request for Microformats to Stack Overflow.

Let me know if any of that helps.

On Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 3:05 AM, Gideon Greenspan <research at gidgreen.com> wrote:
>
> Hi there,
>
> I'm currently polishing a free PHP/MySQL platform for Question & Answer sites (www.question2answer.org) and want to implement microformats to the maximum extent possible. The whole point of Q&A is to structure forum-style discussions better, so microformat integration should enable aggregation and ranking of Q&A-style content across all sites that deploy my platform (and indeed others).
>
> I'm spending a lot of time in the microformats wiki and doing my best to implement standard elements where possible. For example, a question page (that also shows related answers) will be a series of CLASS="hentry" elements. Some other elements that work well: entry-title, entry-content, rel=tag, published and author.
>
> But there are a bunch of things that I want to make semantically available to machine readers that don't seem to touch on any of the microformat standards. For example: (a) to denote that a particular hentry is a question or an answer, (b) to flag one particular answer as the one that was selected as the best, (c) to show the net total of votes (any +/- integer) received by a question or answer.
>
> What's the most appropriate way for me to proceed? I *could* start making elements up and modifying pages in the wiki, but I feel I should be treading more lightly until I become more familiar with microformat culture and practice.
>
> Thanks in advance for any assistance.
>
> Gideon
>
>
> --
> Gideon Greenspan
> http://www.gidgreen.com/
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--
Angelo Gladding
angelo at gladding.name
http://angelo.gladding.name/