[uf-discuss] schema.org, microformats.org, hRecipe

Wed Jul 6 22:28:11 PDT 2011

2011/7/1 thomas lörtsch <thomas at stray.net>:
> Tantek,
>
> since you already contributed to this thread, would you care to comment on my original question? Or can you point me to a wiki page where it is answered already?

Ok will do.

> Besides browsing through the microformats.org site I also fulltext-searched it for "Google" but couldn't find anything relevant wrt my initial question (see the first mail in this thread). Which is odd.

Indeed.

> PS: And can you elaborate (or point me to a wiki page) how email archives on the web are "NOT" discoverable?

See above where you wrote:

"fulltext-searched it for "Google" but couldn't find anything relevant
wrt my initial question (see the first mail in this thread). Which is
odd."

Your statement demonstrates my point about how email archives on the
web are "NOT" discoverable.

Now, as to your specific questions:

2011/6/29 thomas lörtsch <thomas at stray.net>:
> Hi all,
>
> I don't want to discuss the schema.org effort in general here, although there surely is a lot to discuss about it.

I've got about a half-dozen or so blog posts in progress strongly
critiquing and debunking schema.org as an effort - there are so many
things wrong with it that it's taking me a while to collect / itemize
them all. I'm also trying to focus my longer analyses on what to do
right rather than what schema.org has done wrong. E.g.:

http://tantek.com/2011/168/b1/practices-good-open-web-standards-development

If you want to discuss/critique schema.org in particular, check out:

irc://irc.freenode.net/schema where the minutes for the SemTech meetup
were taken.

> My question is how collaboration between Google.com and microformats.org is organized, where it's taking place,

In short: on the wiki, irc channel, and a little on the *-discuss and
*-new mailing lists, like with anybody else.

> who is involved.

The SemTech transcript mentioned both hReview-aggregate and hRecipe as
you quoted.

If you google for both of those:

hReview-aggregate - first result:

http://microformats.org/wiki/hreview-aggregate

which says right at the top:

"Editor
    Kavi Goel, Google."

and:

"Authors/Contributers (alphabetical)
...
    Othar Hansson, Google "

hRecipe - first result:

http://microformats.org/wiki/hrecipe

Searching that page for "Google" you quickly find:

Google. Launched 24th February, 2011, Recipe View search results from
Google are powered by hRecipe marked-up snippets.

where Recipe View links to:

http://www.google.com/landing/recipes/

which doesn't say who specifically is involved.

Googling for:

hrecipe google

3rd result is:

http://microformats.org/2011/02/24/google-launches-microformat-powered-recipe-search

wherein the 2nd link is:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/slice-and-dice-your-recipe-search.html

which if you read to the end of the post is:

"Posted by Kavi Goel, Product Manager"

> I'm sure there is and has always been some informal exchange,

Actually I personally try to minimize informal person-to-person
exchanges regarding microformats as they doesn't scale well for the
community.

Kavi has contacted me personally in the past and I've done my best to
direct him to ask his questions etc. on the IRC channel and document
his research / requirements / brainstorms publicly on the wiki,
emphasizing that it's ok to have incomplete/partial work on the wiki
while figuring things out.

> since people happen to know each other, meet at confernces or other events etc,

Those are all true of course. However even in those cases, it's best
to have those discussion in open areas such as the IRC channel or the
wiki for everyone's benefit.

> and of course that's fine with me.

That's generous of you, however I do think it is reasonable to request
that folks in the microformats community prefer community forums (IRC,
wiki, mailing list if necessary) to private one-on-one or small group
interactions (with perhaps the one exception of just wanting to bounce
crazy/uncertain/raw ideas off of friends to sanity-check them before
sharing more widely/publicly).

> I was wondering though when I read the following statement in a transcript of the Schema.org BOF at SemTech 2011 <http://www.w3.org/2011/06/semtech-bof-notes.html>:
>
>> [...]
>> Kevin Marks: Microformats says have a discussion first. You did that with hRecipe, so I'm surprsed to see you didnt go through that here. That'a the difference in phsilophy
>> Tantek Çelik: Google (Kavi in particular!) successfully worked with the open community on both hReview-aggregate and hRecipe - openly.
>> [...]
>> Kevin Marks: hRecipe was a great example of how Google can do this.
>> [...]
>
>
> This sounds like quite some conversations, discussions and thorough work. Now I wonder: how specifically did that "great" and "successfull" work "with the open community" go? Where did it take place?

On the wiki (as documented above) and mailing lists.

A simple microformats.org site-specific search of Kavi Goel gives you plenty:

http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Amicroformats.org+%22Kavi+Goel%22

> Who was involved?

See above. From trivial googling of hReview-aggregate, Kavi and Othar.

> And what exactly was worked out?

What you see on the wiki.

> I won't hesitate to admit that I wasn't a very good editor of hRecipe since summer 2009 but I still am the editor as indicated on the hRecipe wikipage.

You did fine. Certainly sufficiently well that no one else wanted to
step up and take your place as editor. You stepped up and did a lot of
work, and positively contributed to the microformats community, which
I personally am quite thankful for, and I'm sure others are too.

> I wasn't contacted by anyone regarding Rich Snippets, Schema.org or any other Google activity.

If an open community is working well, then there should be no need for
any person-to-person specific contacts.

> Also I couldn't find any mention on the mailinglists or on the wiki. So, please: what's going on, what did I miss? Or how is this "open"?

You couldn't find mentions of what? hRecipe? hReview-aggregate? rich snippets?

All of these are trivially discoverable via a site-specific search:

https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site%3Amicroformats.org+hRecipe+OR+%22hReview-aggregate%22+OR+%22rich+snippets%22

> Since Schema.org now promotes a recipe vocabulary that is slightly different from hRecipe and also more elaborated I would like to discuss what to do about that: maybe analyze the differences, observe uptake, then align hRecipe where appropriate etc.

There are a couple of things you can do with Schema.org's slightly
different recipe format, or any other recipe format:

1. Add them to recipe-formats
 http://microformats.org/wiki/recipe-formats

2. Add specific new features (that hRecipe doesn't have yet) to the
brainstorming page:
 http://microformats.org/wiki/recipe-brainstorming

> But before I start to work on that I'd like to understand what happened until now.

Excellent instinct and I commend you for it. That's the same reason
the process requires documenting examples in the wild of content
publishing, as well as previous/other efforts at formats.

http://microformats.org/wiki/process#Document_Current_Behavior

Thanks,

Tantek

-- 
http://tantek.com/ - I made an HTML5 tutorial! http://tantek.com/html5