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=citeRel brainstorming=
Various parties have proposed microformats related to citations and distributed conversations. Ryan King and Eran Globen started with hVia (which became citeVia and later citeRel :-)). You can see the conversation in these blog posts:

People already cite their sources in their blog posts and it would be great (and shouldn't be too difficult) to track that information. In that vein, read [http://theryanking.com/blog/archives/2005/05/06/hvia/ this post] which covers the initial thinking on the topic. ([http://theryanking.com/blog/archives/2005/05/09/citevia/ This] was a followup post).

Later, [http://hellononline.com Eran] [http://hellonline.com/blog/?p=18 expanded the idea] to encompass not just via citations, but replies and updates as well. Follow up post [http://hellonline.com/blog/?p=19 here].

==Problem==
The basic idea we're trying to solve here is the tracking of distributed conversation- more specifically, distributed conversation between blog posts– the scope is intentionally limited here, though other aspects of distributed conversation are certainly important and related.


:A smaller portion of the problem is in identifying the most authoritative sources in a web-wide thread. In researching anything, the ability to identify a primary source is invaluable. Adding this kind of ordinality would add value to any list of related links such as a tag page.

::Finding an authoritative source is not a smaller problem, but a larger problem- you have to have the whole conversation graph in order to find the root nodes. --RyanKing

:Citing (quoting or refering to as an authoritative source or precedent) and hat-tipping (giving credit to a non-primary source for calling attention to a primary [authoritative] source) are certainly two different animals. Common etiquette suggests use of anchor tags because they can be actuated by the user.

:I dug around at [http://www.w3.org WC3] and found rel="cite" is ''already defined'' in the [http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-xhtml2-20050527/mod-metaAttributes.html XHTML Metainformation Attributes Module]. In the [http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-xhtml2-20050527/mod-hyperAttributes.html XHTML 2.0 Hypertext Attribute Collection], href and cite attributes are defined and may coexist but they behave differently: The href attribute "specifies a URI that is actuated when the element is activated." For the cite attribute, "User Agents MUST provide a means for the user to actuate the link."

::This has already been covered in the above blog posts. Admitedly, it needs to be brought into this document, though. --RyanKing

:Whereas authors in general like their work to be cited with hyperlinks, and whereas users can be counted upon to cite primary and non-primary sources simultaneously without differentiating them, and whereas the only difference between a primary citation and a non-primary citation is the potential for skipped vias when considered across a distributed conversation, and whereas the use of existing specifications is preferred to the creation of redundant systems, and whereas increasing attributes is less severe than increasing nested elements, I propose that good definition and use of rel="cite" will resolve the problem of crediting sources via anchors. <cite>Andy Skelton</cite>

::I see the conclusion as quite the opposite.  Because rel="cite" *is* defined in XHTML2 drafts, and microformats allow you add rel values to HTML4/XHTML1 *now*, adopting the same convention makes a lot of sense.

::If anything it bolsters the case for rel="cite" (as opposed to some other value like rel="source").

::In a relCite microformat, you would define the "cite" value by normatively referencing XHTML2, rather than redefining it (even copy/pasting the definition from the XHTML2 spec -- though one could do so "informatively"), just like in [[hcard|hCard]], we define the properties by normatively referencing vCard. <cite>Tantek</cite>

:::[http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-xhtml2-20050527/ XHTML 2.0] states that it "should in no way be considered stable, and should not be normatively referenced for any purposes whatsoever." <cite>Andy Skelton</cite>

:There is a related problem which is not exactly the same.  Let's say that you have a bit of microformatted data which implies an assertion, and the asserter is the containing page.  For example a relTag might have semantic value like "I claim that this object is a FOO."  When that assertion is copied over to a new page, the identity of the asserter has to be made explicit: "according to the original containing page at BAR, this object is a FOO."  Now let's say somebody copies over the copy.  This might happen if there was a B-lister who had an entry picked up by an A-lister, and the A-lister's entry was then copied by a vast number of C-listers.  (That's a typical pattern for data diffusion).  For the data to keep its integrity, the source of the citation would always have to be the original containing page (the B-lister) rather than the containing page that the copy was fetched from (the A-lister).  <cite>Lucas Gonze</cite>

::Lucas- that's why God invented &lt;blockquote&gt;. Content ''copied'' from one site to another should be quoted. --RyanKing

::The question isn't about whether something was copied but what the cite source is.  This is a case where the difference between a primary citation and a non-primary citation affects the meaning of the data.  <cite>Lucas Gonze</cite>

== Nested cite/anchor tags ==

== rel="cite" / rev="cite" ==

This could be a way to indicate a citation of linked content, typically web pages (or portions thereof, like blog posts) but inclusive of any kind of resource with a URL. "Cite" is defined as "to quote or refer to as a precedent or authority."

By adding <code>rel="cite"</code> to a hyperlink, an author could indicate that the destination of that hyperlink is an authoritative source or a precedent to the current page. rel="cite" would be used whether an author cites by quotation:
<pre><blockquote>Our liberty depends on the freedom of the
press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.
<a href="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson" rel="cite">
Thomas Jefferson</a></blockquote></pre>
or by reference only:
<pre><a href="http://example.com/joeschmoe/article/99/" rel="cite">
Joe Schmoe's latest rant</a> is wrong, wrong, wrong...</pre>

<code>rel="cite"</code> hyperlinks are intended to be visible links on pages and posts.  Note that other markup may be used to indicate citation:
<pre><blockquote cite="http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson">
Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be
limited without being lost.<cite>Thomas Jefferson</cite></blockquote></pre>
but User Agents are not compelled to expose a link to the cited resource. Hyperlinks are preferred by most authors because they afford the user easy access to the cited resource.

== citeRel vs. relCite ==
For basic structure and markup of citations it has been suggested that we use the following:
<pre>
<!-- relCite example -->
<a rel="cite" href="source.url">source.title</a>
</pre>
instead of 
<pre>
<!-- citeRel example -->
<cite><a href="source.url">source.title</a></cite>
</pre>

There are several reasons to prefer the citeRel form over the relCite form of markup:
# citeRel uses only existing XHTML elements and values where relCite uses a new rel value.
# citeRel is easily extensible without breaking it's existing meaning.

==Additional Resources==
* Thread Description Language - TDL is an RDF vocabulary for describing threaded discussions, such as Usenet, weblogs, bulletin boards, and e-mail conversations.
** http://www.eyrie.org/~zednenem/2002/web-threads/
** http://www.eyrie.org/~zednenem/2002/wtprofile/
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