block-list-brainstorming

block list brainstorming

Brainstorm proposals for a block list microformat. Part of the effort to enable greater social network portability.

reusing existing microformats

Per the principle of reuse, it is best to first consider what microformats we could reuse to achieve new functionality.

votelinks reuse

What if we just use rev="vote-against"?

It is possible, yet based on examples, sometimes all that one may have to block is a name, not a link, and thus vote-links are insufficient.

In addition, minimizing re-use of vote-links minimizes further suggestions of using the 'rev' attribute, per the rel-faq.

external proposals

Before documenting any new proposals, are there any external proposals that we should consider?

XEN

If friends can be imported from a page bearing XFN links, then why not also import block lists using XEN?

XEN is satire and not serious, it itself documents that it is not for use: "XEN is not a microformat. It is a joke."

simple container of hCards

On sites that present an interface to view and edit a block list (see block-list-examples), they nearly always have a containing list, div or table element that surrounds all the names (and/or URLs) of those that are blocked.

Thus:

• root classname: blocklist

individually blocked people, users, accounts etc are represented by hCards inside the element with classname "blocklist".

Thus an individual may be represented by name, or by URL (e.g. a user profile URL), or both, and thus a site can block specific user profiles, or perhaps "fuzzy" block any individual that matches a given name, or perhaps even provide an interface to manage blocking of specific accounts that appear to match just a name in a block list.

Proposed by Tantek during events/2008-08-12-weekly-meetup-dinner.

example

Here is a simple example of a block list using this brainstormed format:

<ul class="blocklist">
 <li class="vcard">
  <a class="fn url" href="/people/boarsunderabridge">boarsunderabridge</a>
 </li>
 <li class="vcard">
  <a class="fn url" href="/people/flyinlentils">Flyin Lentils</a>
 </li>
</ul>

examples in the wild

Here are examples in the wild that make use of the the above simple container of hCards block-list brainstorm:

• Experiments with troll markup

see also

• block-list
• block-list-formats
• block-list-brainstorming
• social-network-portability