[uf-new] New proposal - replace custom web analytics markup with microformat(s)

[Liam Clancy]

Hi Scott, thanks for your response, I've added my comments inline below.

On 29 Oct 2009, at 15:54, Scott Reynen wrote:

> I see several problems with hPage.  Unfortunately, it looks like  
> you've gone too far to correct these problems without a complete  
> overhaul.

That's no problem for me, the draft we put together was for the web  
analytics vendors discussion and illustration of an alternative mark- 
up syntax, and it has been very persuasive, however we realised the  
more we worked on it that there was no way we could complete the spec  
to an acceptable level without proper input from the community.

I really wish we have been able to avoid calling this a 'microformat'  
but it was needed to explain the concepts behind microformats in  
general before introducing a proposal.

>> This proposal was developed using the published microformats  
>> process as much as possible
>
> Can you maybe clarify how you accomplished each step of the  
> process?  For example, where are the real world examples?

I found the process published on the microformats wiki and adopted it  
internally to establish the need for HTML based mark-up solution, we  
have examples and analysis to share and I will be putting it on the  
wiki asap. In the meantime the work we have done has been written up  
here as an introduction to the vendors which may help:

<https://jshub.org/projects/markup/introduction.html>

> You've published some microformat principles, but you seem to have  
> violated nearly all of them:
>
> - Solve a specific problem
> 	hPage explicitly models two different types of data: HTML pages and  
> dynamic content fragments.  The former is already modeled by HTML  
> itself, and the latter is often not published within HTML documents.
> - Design for humans first, machines second.
> 	The data you're modeling is primarily for machines.
> - Reuse existing building blocks, such as semantic HTML and existing  
> microformats
> 	You've circumvented <title>, among other existing building blocks.
> - Modularity / embeddability
> 	You've declared definitions for incredibly generic terms like  
> "name" and "type" as specific to the context(s) of hPage, which  
> would make them unusable by any other microformat.
>
> These are large enough problems that I'd suggest revisiting the  
> beginning of the microformats process and walking through it all  
> again.  Let's talk about just the first step: what exactly is the  
> problem you're trying to solve?  I know you've stated this already,  
> but it'll be hard for anyone to focus on the problem as long as  
> you're stating it in the context of a specific solution.

That's good feedback and I'll do my best with the Problem Statement to  
address these, although as I have already admitted it may be that we  
won't be able to settle on a 'proper' microformat, however the process  
will be enormously beneficial in seeing how web analytics products can  
make use of microformat data published by content creators in a  
standardised way.


Liam Clancy
-- 
http://jshub.org/
http://metafeather.net/

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