[uf-discuss] Mailing list debate moved & new proposal

[Mike Schinkel]

Chris:

>> I mean, once you're into personal preferences, 

Just a point of note, I brought my preferences up only to show that there
were counter preferances and that one-sided preferences shouldn't be the
driving factor.  Which was a much more verbose way of saying what you just
said.

>> But rather than host it all here on the microformats-discuss list,
there's no reason why folks can't go off and start their own efforts, as
others have (see: Social Media Club). 

You are right, there is no reason people can't, but respectfully I think
it's not a good idea for them or for the Microformats initiative.  There
would be a HUGE duplication of effort, and I don't mean related to technical
work; I mean related to the branding and marketing and PR of the proposed
new efforts.  

I think haven't splinter groups would also potentially confuse the web
development public for which 99% have yet to learn of Microformats.
Mindshare and attention are in finite supply and any similar initiatives
would take away from the mindshare and atttention related to Microformats.
For example, if we had two oor three other groups vying for media attention
(or eventually 50+ other groups) then the Microformat message could easily
get diluted, obscured, or become invisible. 

And for splinter groups we'd have no control how they position themselves
and/or we'd have to pay lawyers to tell them to stop using the Microformat
term if we didn't like how they were using it. And on and on and on.

So I think it would be much much better to scale up the process so that lots
of people can involved all under the marketing and PR of the Microformat
brand. And frankly I don't think it would be that hard to manage. It would
primarily take specifying a process by which these other groups get formed
and what activity and quality they need to achieve and then maintain, and
then som ongoing monitoring.

Chris, don't get me wrong; I respect your opinion greatly.  I can see how
your idea seemed good at the time, but don't you now agree that it could be
a minefield of unexploded IEDs?  Hopefully you see my point now, and concur?

-Mike
P.S. BTW, I've been advocating vBulletin, but I also have a Community Server
forum up and running RIGHT NOW that also (could) integrate with a mailing
list (I'd have to buy the add-on first) and we could use it for those who
like forums, everyone else would be unaffected assuming we all agree.  The
forum us located at http://www.MashupTalk.com and I plan to get it going in
the near future.  Having a section on Microformats would fit perfectly into
it's mission.  What do you think?


-----Original Message-----
From: microformats-discuss-bounces at microformats.org
[mailto:microformats-discuss-bounces at microformats.org] On Behalf Of Chris
Messina
Sent: Friday, November 03, 2006 4:44 AM
To: Microformats Discuss
Subject: Re: Re: [uf-discuss] Mailing list debate moved & new proposal

Wow. This thread spiraled into nowhere land quickly.

I mean, once you're into personal preferences, you know that you're never
going to win. Some prefer email, some forums, some RSS -- hell
-- it's just the *display* of data. Thank g*d we separated those two a long
time ago so that people can have their way! (Just for notes, Google Groups
Beta is kind of the ideal merger of forums, email and RSS, if you haven't
tried it yet).

Anyway, let me throw out something controversial to steer this back.

So there's been discussion about creating new lists for every new
microformat that's proposed. Well, that sounds like a very fractious action,
that could really undermine the authority of the group.

Or not.

But rather than host it all here on the microformats-discuss list, there's
no reason why folks can't go off and start their own efforts, as others have
(see: Social Media Club). I'm not advocating the splitting of the community,
but I am advocating for folks to see to their own desires, interests and
verticals and take the model, spirit and goals of microformats and strike
out on your own and work to get your own microformats adopted.

Because it's true, this form of dialogue doesn't scale well -- and the only
way to advance is to farm out the work to distributed nodes in the system,
let them focus hard and work hard, and then return back with their findings,
implementations and/or adoptions.

No one's stopping you. As far as I'm concerned, have at.

Chris


On 11/3/06, Frances Berriman <fberriman at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/3/06, Benjamin West <bewest at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > If people want to filter things out, or draw particular attention 
> > > to a thread being related to a specific proposal, using the 
> > > [hCard] notation (for example) works quite well in the subject field.
> >
> > I concur.  Filtering features are well supported on many of the mail 
> > clients I've seen, and a simple filter with the convention of 
> > "tagging" threads with square brackets would probably work fine.
>
> I like simple solutions.  :)
>
> To be honest, I just don't want to be checking a mailing list, wiki 
> AND a forum.  Selfish, selfish of me.
>
>
> --
> Frances Berriman
> http://fberriman.com
> _______________________________________________
> microformats-discuss mailing list
> microformats-discuss at microformats.org
> http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
>


--
Chris Messina
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