<div>On 7/31/07, Scott Reynen <<a href="mailto:scott@makedatamakesense.com">scott@makedatamakesense.com</a>> wrote:<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> On Jul 31, 2007, at 11:26 AM, Manu Sporny wrote: >> So in other words, we're talking about uncertainty in more than one >> dimension, as expressed by a covariance matrix. > > Hi Charlie - to work on this, you would have to demonstrate a > number of > places on the web that already publish information like this. How many > websites out there publish numbers with associated covariance > matrices? > > Microformats don't try and invent new ways of publishing > information. If > you can't find at least 10-20 examples of this happening on the > web, you > are going to have a very hard time asking the community to spend > time to > create the Microformat that you're proposing. I agree that demonstrating broad community value is necessary if you want broad community participation.  That's just how people seem to work, and microformats formalize this to reduce wasted time.  But while it's naturally the focus of this community, broad community value isn't the only kind of value.  Disinterest here shouldn't be taken as a sign that something is worthless, only that this community is probably not the best place to pursue it.  There is plenty of value in standardizing HTML for individual people or organizations. And where this overlaps with the broader community efforts of microformats, i.e . where we can help, we're generally eager to do so. The subject quest here is "Microformat for expressing uncertainty?" It seems the answer to that is probably no.  But rather than stopping there, I'd encourage you to ask a different question: "Plain old semantic HTML for expressing uncertainty?" I believe the answer to that is likely yes. -- Scott Reynen MakeDataMakeSense.com </blockquote></div> ahhh... ok, I guess I am really just talking about deciding on a way to apply semantic HTML to a problem, and not asking for a community effort to formalize it. So if "Microformat" implies a formal community effort then no, I'm not asking for a Microformat. It would be nice to lay down a schema somehow to describe it though, so I'm not just using tags. It seems like XMDP is the way to do this. Is that the preferred route for rolling your own?