[uf-discuss] Has the cowpath for these XFN values faded away: friend, co-worker, muse, etc?

[Ryan King]

On Mar 18, 2008, at 9:18 AM, Costello, Roger L. wrote:
> Chris Messina wrote[1]: "... you'll find that, by and large, the
> majority of XFN links on the web are using either rel-contact or
> rel-me."
>
> I have been looking at various social networks for the last week, and
> Chris' statement is consistent with what I have seen - most web pages
> just use "contact" or "me".
>
> This puzzles me.  Microformats are about paving existing cowpaths.

Historical note: XFN was created several years before the word  
"microformats" was coined, the microformats process was created, etc.

> I
> presume the authors of XFN saw a clear cowpath for not only "contact"
> and "me", but for all the other XFN values, such as "friend",
> "co-worker", "muse", etc.  Has the cowpath for these later values
> disappeared, and thus are no longer needed?

There's not a lot of value in taking other relationship types out of  
XFN. It'd make the spec smaller, but would lead to people who  
encounter those edges cases asking for re-inclusion.

So, in a way, whether values besides 'contact' and 'me' are valuable,  
it doesn't matter that much at this point, there are more important  
things to work on.

-ryan