From ts at ambiweb.de  Tue Dec  7 10:37:16 2010
From: ts at ambiweb.de (ts@ambiweb.de)
Date: Tue Dec  7 10:37:29 2010
Subject: [uf-new] Proposal for using hatom as microformat for discussions
Message-ID: <5B86ED40A14E604BB64FE7333F5BBF7C01F4D154728F@ECCR01PUBLIC.exchange.local>

Hi!

I would like to propose a draft for a microformat for discussions. Searchengines as Google already list discussion as rich-snippet searchresults. Google seems to extract the data by using known markup of big bulleting boards. I think there are better ways to provide structured data for discussions and connected data like user profiles. I did a lot of research during the last weeks. 

Some people did a good job in collecting the markup of various bulletin boards: http://microformats.org/wiki/blog-post-formats#Discussion_Forum_.2F_Bulletin_Board_Formats
Yahoo Searchmonkey already supports a discussion microformat based on hatom: http://developer.yahoo.com/searchmonkey/smguide/enhanced_getting.html#d4e1821

I suggest to start pick up Yahoos idea and use hatom and cover some things yahoo missed.

1. Basics

hfeed (optional)
hentry (indicates a post/topic, first one indicates topic)
? entry-title (title of the post/topic, required)
? entry-content (the content oft the post/topic)
? author (information about the author using hcard microformat, required)
?? vcard (required)
??? fn (required)
??? url (link to the profile of that user, optional)
? updated (The date and time when the post was last updated, required)

2. Indicate Pagination

Pagination of Discussions should be indicated using rel-values: http://microformats.org/wiki/existing-rel-values

rel
start (indicates first page)
prev (indicates previous page)
next (indicates next page)

Information for the pagination might be provided within hfeed or in the header of the page:

<link rel="start" href="/topics/51310/" /> 
<link rel="next" href="/topics/51310/?page=4" /> 
<link rel="prev" href="/topics/51310/?page=2" />

Here a possible snippet:

<div class="hfeed">
<div class="hentry">
? <h1 class="entry-title">Title for discussion</h1>
?? <div class="entry-content">
???? Content of discussion post
?? </div>
? Author: <span class="vcard author fn">John Doe</span>
? Last updated: <abbr class="updated" title="2010-10-19T16:53:58+02:00?>October 19, 2010</abbr>
</div>
<div class="hentry">
? <h2 class="entry-title">Title for discussion</h2>
?? <div class="entry-content">
???? Content of discussion post
?? </div>
? Author: <span class="vcard author fn">John Doe</span>
? Last updated: <abbr class="updated" title="2010-10-19T16:53:58+02:00?>October 19, 2010</abbr>
</div>
<a rel="start" href="/?page=1">1</a>
<a rel="prev" href="/?page=2">2</a>
<a href="/?page=3">3</a>
<a rel="next" href="/?page=4">4</a>
</div>

Some thoughts:

Since everything is hatom the hatom specification should apply.
Since some bulletin boards do not have titles for replys it might be a good idea to allow an empty entry-title tag for replies.

What do you think?

Best Regards 
Tobias Schwarz