[uf-discuss] Re: XPN: Xhtml Professional Network - idea

[Ben Buchanan]

Hi again,

> Ben Buchanan; I don't really agree with you there, there are plenty of
> web development company's that have clients they do not concider
> friends. While there are those that do, I don't think we should alienate
> those that don't. A relationships microformat which incorporates both
> XFN and XPN would be a great solution indeed.

I wasn't saying all business/clients were friends - my point was just
that creating a "business only" microformat seems counter productive.
I think XFN and XPN should be superseded by one single, combined
relationships microformat which can cover all bases.

If someone only wanted to show a friends network they could; if a
company only wants to show business relationships they could do that
too. Nobody would be alienated with a combined uf.

I would happily see XFN extended with business relationships since
it's only the name which prevents that happening. Rename it from
"friends network" to "relationship network" or something and it's all
good :)

To approach it another way - XFN is essentially just an addon to
blogrolls. A business blogroll does not have any requirements that
cannot be met by XFN's pattern - it's just that XFN is limited to a
narrow set of "friend" relationships (although they spill over to
professional as well, with colleague etc). We could extend XFN - which
is already adopted by many people/sites - to include more values and
avoid creating competing ufs.

> You are completely right about sliced and design not being a
> relationship. You are also right about defining global business
> relationships, It seems I wanted to define too much.

I feel that you're heading into resume territory - allowing people to
specify what they did on a specific project. Still valuable, but not
something that would really work in a blogroll situation (being the
most common use of XFN I've seen so far).

cheers,

Ben

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