[microformats-discuss] xFolk revision on the wiki

[Bud Gibson]

On Jul 9, 2005, at 18:00, Tantek Çelik wrote:

> On 7/8/05 6:52 AM, "Bud Gibson" <bud at thecommunityengine.com> wrote:
>
>
> One minor naming nit:
>
>
>> http://microformats.org/wiki/xfolk-XMDP
>>
>
> I think we should put the XMDP profile for a spec in a wiki page  
> that is the
> name of the spec with "-profile" appended, e.g.
>
>  http://microformats.org/wiki/hcard-profile

You know, I wondered about this.  I'll fix it tomorrow.  I suppose  
the intention is for people to link to the wiki page for their xmdp,  
right?  That just now hit me as how it would work.

BTW, I've come to the conclusion that the wiki format is much more  
natural for doing this sort of thing.  The super-easy revisions,  
letting other (sane, hopefully) folks contribute, and versioning are  
big pluses.

Also, I think the template you have worked out through your previous  
efforts is spot-on for succinct communication with the developer  
community.  I put myself through the pain of recasting xFolk into  
wiki form because that goal seemed worth it.

One thought:  why not boilerplate a version of that for microformats  
proposals (I may just do this) and then as people have bright ideas  
they could just fill that out and post it for reaction.  We would  
then have an archive of all of the ideas that is searchable.

We could put this in a section of the site called microformat  
brainstorming.  People who had bright ideas would have to fill out  
the form (has to be something in there about past practice) which  
imposes a sort of cost (not too high though).  Getting your thing out  
of microformat brainstorming would require getting some sort of  
critical mass of test cases and a few implementations.

Debate could take place in the talk pages of the wiki.

I could go on and on, but I'll wait for reactions.

Pluses:  (1) A structured way for ideas to bubble up; (2) An archive  
of ideas (good and bad); (3) A format for improving and perhaps  
radically altering proposals that does not take up email bandwidth.

Negatives: (1) Do people really understand micrformats well enough to  
do this? (2) Once something is on an archive, people think it is real  
maybe making it harder to give up on loser ideas; (3) The potential  
for pages to become objects of acrimonious debate (e.g., Dave Winer's  
complaints about podcasting).

Bud