[microformats-discuss] RelPayment: Requesting comments

[Ryan King]

On Aug 8, 2005, at 9:57 AM, Andreas Haugstrup wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> In videoblogging land we've been working on the RelPayment  
> microformat. It didn't gather any comments here the first time  
> around, but I thought I'd try again.

Well, you asked for it... :)

> The draft is at <URL: http://videovertigo.org/wiki/index.php/ 
> RelPayment >

A couple of comments:

1. The name - the referenced url isn't really a "payment," but a  
place for someone to make a payment. Perhaps "tip jar" would be a  
better metaphor. I think this also helps to communicate that the  
payment is not required, but a donation. Additionally, the spec says:  
"RelPayment is meant as a general way to facilitate acts of support,  
and thus this specification makes no assumptions on the type of  
support." So why not have a more general name?

2. Visbible metadata++ :)

3. Is there anyone, anywhere who's done anything similar?  I honestly  
don't know and I don't know that anyone else has done the research.

You see, a very important part of the microformat ethos is the  
principle of reuse (or principle of non-invention)- meaning that we  
reuse as much as possible and only invent new markup/semantics when  
necessary. Given that, it'd be nice to see some background research  
regarding prior art in this area. And "prior art" includes everything  
from IETF standards to homegrown conventions that have emerged as  
common practice. I know that people link to payment/tipjar/support  
pages.... but how? and where? and who?  These are questions that it  
would be nice to see documented answers to.

Its entirely possible that these questions have already been  
answered, but it'd be nice to see documented in public (and in text,  
not video :-)).

> In videoblogging land we would like to move this draft from the  
> videovertigo wiki to microformats.org.

+1

> The thought is that we'd like to avoid having RelPayment branded as  
> a 'video' thing instead of a general purpose format. What's the  
> process here?

http://microformats.org/wiki/process is our general microformat  
development process.

> Can I just create a new page on the microformats.org wiki for this?

I know you guys have already moved as far has having a basic  
specification, but it seems you may have skipped some necessary  
research steps (see my above comments). Perhaps you'd like to start a  
page at one of http://microformats.org/wiki/relpayment-research (or  
pick a more general name than relpayment)?

> There are programmers of feed readers who would like to support  
> this today rather than tomorrow, so we'd like to get the 'draft'  
> sticker off this thing soon. It is after all not a very complicated  
> format.

Of course, its nice to get support quickly. Just remember that we'll  
have to live a long time with whatever format we develop- let's make  
sure we get it right the first time.

Andreas- please dont' take my criticism as harsh, I want to see this  
format succeed.

-ryan