[uf-discuss] Live Writer and microformats

[Colin Barrett]

On Oct 5, 2006, at 10:19 PM, Joe Andrieu wrote:

> Chris Messina wrote:
>> This kind of delves into the "authoritative standards"
>> doesn't it? And how do you keep up with an ever-growing
>> repository of microformats?
>>
>> Obviously it can be done -- and it's something that we need,
>> especially if we're to get support for microformats into
>> client-side software... so isn't that where remote
>> definitions/profiles come in? Sorry for showing my ignorance
>> here, but how would, for example, Flock, (or better, Lucene)
>> stay up-to-date with the most current listing/definitions of
>> all the available microformats?
>
>
> Take the work Andy has been doing on the species uF.  He's prolific.  
> He's
> putting in a lot of effort and making headway in the process. He's  
> also
> relatively new, fitting the pattern I described above.  I respectfully
> suggest that much of the friction with Andy can be attributed to the  
> need to
> acclimate new users to the community.  I had a similarly frustrating  
> first
> few conversations with the list.  It's the nature of finding one's way
> through the social norms of a new community.  And when the typical  
> dynamic
> is that new people get turned on to uF and want to contribute, the  
> natural
> result is that a large number of uF initiatives will go through the
> normalization/socialization/learning curve of the champion.  This  
> slows down
> what is already slow from the consensus decision making process and
> volunteer labor force.  And as more people dive into the community,  
> the more
> divergent the forces for the cultural norm become, which can itself  
> make it
> harder to maintain a consistent, viable norm.

I agree -- and not in the way you'd think. I'm going to leave Andy out  
of this, and instead talk about myself. I joined this list to help  
work on hChat (I work on Adium, a Mac OS X IM client). I quickly  
realized that before I could work on it successfully and move the  
process forward, I needed to become familiar with the community. So  
I've been lurking, albiet a bit noisily at times, but I've been trying  
to soak up as much of the community on this list as I can. I'm  
planning on writing some semantic HTML in the future and trying to get  
things rolling on really understanding uF. THEN, I think I will be  
able to help move hChat forward.

uF does seem to have a very slow process, but I think that's a good  
thing -- it gives formats a time to percolate and refine themselves  
(and for demonstrable need to really be shown), which I think is a  
very good thing.

-Colin