life, death and address books (was Re: [uf-discuss] hCard and Life Dates?)

[Scott Reynen]

On Apr 19, 2006, at 10:52 AM, Tantek Çelik wrote:

> Rather than attempting to shoehorn this into hCard, perhaps  
> citations are
> the right place to think about this?

I think there is a large difference between what to do with contact  
data for an acquaintance who has recently passed away and how to mark  
up historical information on a stranger, and my first thought was  
that the two are probably distinct enough to belong in two separate  
formats.  But my second thought was that this is all similar to  
genealogical data, and perhaps both the personal and the impersonal  
purposes could be served with such a format, as some people do  
genealogy for personal reasons, and others do it for historical  
reasons.  I see the start of such a format here:

http://microformats.org/wiki/genealogy-formats

Peace,
Scott