[uf-new] Proposal for using hatom as microformat for discussions

[ts at ambiweb.de]

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