[uf-discuss] Marking Up Personal Profiles

[Lachlan Hunt]

Tantek Çelik wrote:
> The key distinction with microformats is to make sure that *all* your
> example data is based on data actually found on the Web *with* specific URLs
> to where the data can be retrieved and analyzed by anyone.

Most of the example fields I listed were based on those found primarily 
on LavaLife and RSVP profile pages.  Other similar sites include 
match.com and AdultMatchMaker  The actual personal data values I used, 
however, was just made up for privacy reasons.

http://lavalife.com.au/
http://www.rsvp.com.au/
http://match.com.au/
http://adultmatchmaker.com.au/

(Unfortunately, on some of those sites, you need to become a member 
before you can see any profiles.)

> You may wish to take a look at http://microformats.org/wiki/profile-examples
> and contribute to the work there.

I looked for existing work on profiles, but that one wasn't listed on 
the wiki Main_Page with all the others, so I didn't find it.

> In addition, I do suggest more research.
> 
> E.g. you mentioned supposed rel-tag limitations, giving the example of
> "brown":
> 
>> The recurring problem with the use of rel-tag in most of these is that
>> we're trying to represent name:value pairs, whereas rel-tag only really
>> represents the value.
>>
>> e.g. <a href="/tags/blue" rel="tag">Brown</a>
>>
>> That doesn't indicate whether it represents hair colour, eye colour,
>> favourite colour or something else entirely.
> 
> The participants of at least one "social networking" site (consumating.com)
> have already solved this problem, WITHOUT name/value pairs with tags like:
> 
> brown_hair
> blue_eyes

I thought of that, but one of the problems is that some sites may tag 
them like that, others may use "brown_(Hair_Colour)", "Brunette", 
"cheveux bruns" (French for brown hair, according to babelfish) or some 
other variation.  I guess that's an issue with tagging in general, where 
you get people coming up with dozens of different tags to represent 
exactly the same concept.

There are advantages to that type of tagging in some cases.  But say, 
for example, you were using a personals search engine looking for 
brunettes, a search engine should theoretically list people that have 
used either of those tags.

Regarding the name:value pairs issue, there are lots of cases where it's 
useful to markup this kind of structure and HTML has several different 
structures available, including <table>, <dl>, or even <meta name="" 
content=""> (for hidden data).  Maybe we need some kind of design 
patterns describing these and when to choose which method?

-- 
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/