attention-formats

Attention.xml 0.1

Initial Disclaimer

Although this spec-in-progress is well covered on Technorati's open standards wiki, after discussion with Tantek at Gnomedex, I agree that it may well qualify as a Microformat, or rather a collection of Microformats.

It is not at all my intention to take any creadit where credit is othewise due! I will move over as much as needed to get discussion started, then if/when this the collective determines it should be a Microformat, all of the other attributes and history should be moved over (probably by Tantek)

History

Attensa, Inc. is currently using an attention stream to accomplish communication of attention data for both analysis and synchronization between client side components in realtime, and serverside systems in near-realtime.

We are currently in the process of creating and accepting Attention.XML as a shared generic context both client and server side. My goal in the use of Attention.XML is to communicate all of the data required for a full featured sharing of the users current state, and action history. It is important that I say this, so that my suggestions do not seem as an exercize in theory, rather real world needs.

Editor

• Eric Hayes, Attensa, Inc.

Introduction

I believe it possible to make up an Attention.XML Microformat, based on a number of new and existing Microformats (some of which are pointed out in the main Microformats wiki page

Existing Microformats

• XOXO
• XFN
• votelinks
• hCard

Proposed Base Microformats

I hope it is not outside the standards desired for this workspace, but I am going to propose a collection of Microformats which could be used to build up Attention.XML as it exists to day, and add in a few pieces required to flush out the format.

Attention Microformat

I would like to have this single Attention Microformat available to both feeds and articles, and as I move forward with this initial strawman, I will see how they fit for both uses.

• Existing Elements
  • lastread ISO8601 datetime indicating the last time the user has explicitly read (perhaps by selecting) a post/item.
  • duration non-negative int represents seconds the user spent reading this post/item.
  • followedlinks list of URLs from the post that the user has clicked or accessed.
  • rel/votelink vote-for | vote-against | vote-abstain | "" / blank. See votelinks for details.
  • tags A general mechanism for user tagging/annotating.
• Proposed Additional Elements
  • dateremoved ISO8601 datetime indicating when this article was marked as removed. Note: a duration of zero is valid, and should indicate the article was removed without reading.
  • readstate read | unread. I indicating if this article is currently marked as read. Note: a non-zero duration and a readstate of unread indicates the user has either read the article and specifically marked it as unread. (It is possible that duration accumulation could come from the article being visible to the user, but not specifically marked as read. Discussion is needed here, as metrics on faulty duration values is a undesired.)
  • rating 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 or something like that. I believe that a good attention picture is gained by both implied and explisit interaction by the user. It is quite valuable to inspire users to interact, and ratings are a great way to accomplish this. I wonder if rating could tie in with votelinks.

I have quite a bit more to add. I should finish up Tuesday 6/28/05. Please let me finish before we start the discussion. -eric