xFolk: Iteration in Response to Comments

Readers raised several useful issues with the first iteration of the microformat. This new iteration addresses those issues. Further comment is appreciated.

Sections: Emerging Practice Tools and Analytics

Topics: folksonomy SXSW IASummit xFolk

This post is somewhat of an insider's post. I am assuming you have read and are following with interest the xFolk topic I started here.

After some feedback from Thomas Vander Wal and Tantek Çelik, it appears that xFolk is going to require some iterations. There were eight issues with the initial proposal:

1. My creative use of the rel attribute might be hard to get accepted (several issues here)
2. How would uses of attribute values in xFolk mix in with other microformats. In particular, what would I do if my uses of the an attribute collided with other uses?
3. It would be nice to constrain attribute value terms before they are used. People expect to know possible attribute values before they are used. Listing them in the XMDP after they are used breaks standard web processing models.
4. In xhtml (and to some extent generally in xml), attribute values tend not to contain user data. Tags are best considered user data.
5. Regardless of whether one agrees with the prior point, people prefer that user data be contained in elements for the practical reason that it is more visible that way and therefore less likely to be a spam attempt.
6. It would be nice if a more direct tie could be made between this microformat and people's current practices with link blogs and exporting their del.icio.us entries.
7. How would non-hypertechnical users deal with this format?
8. What about privacy? You're publishing everything on the web.

Believe it or not, these all seem surmountable, but they will require redefining important aspects of the microformat.

Continue reading "xFolk: Iteration in Response to Comments"

Bud posted this on March 23, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Maya and the Information Commons

Maya is aiming to provide an information commons for community construction. All is very beta, but they sound like they have some interesting architecture.

Sections: Emerging Practice

Topics: folksonomy IASummit

Yet another IASummit find; Carnegie Mellon where I got my Ph.D. is at it again. A CMU spin-off, Maya is trying to create an information commons. The idea is that this would be a repository where people could put appropriately licensed information (practically speaking, creative commons licensed information) for access.

Why isn't this just another wikipedia you might ask? Well, if you think about wikipedia (an increasingly group-effort encyclopedia on the web), you realize that it uses one method of social aggregation for all of its outputs. Essentially, in wikipedia, people have to agree with what you write. Otherwise, you will find it edited or deleted outright. Basically, your contribution will disappear. As Danah Boyd points out, there is no firm attribution and, in some sense as a result, no permanence in wikipedia.

Continue reading "Maya and the Information Commons"

Bud posted this on March 7, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Paris Hilton and metadata

If reports are to be believed, even Paris Hilton keeps metadata. The main issues for getting people to produce metadata are: making it of personal value to them and making it easy and apparent to share. Getting general value out of metadata produced for personal consumption is an applied exercise.

Sections: Emerging Practice

Topics: folksonomy IASummit

Did Paris Hilton keep metadata in her cracked T-Mobile Sidekick? It does appear from reports that she labeled her address data with nicknames and tags. Inasmuch as these could be used to infer something about the data being stored: “friend”, “business”, etc., then she kept metadata.

Continue reading "Paris Hilton and metadata"

Bud posted this on March 6, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)