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comments on rel-tag microformat

Started by phildawes · 9 months ago

Wrote this comment to somebody else’s blog post at work. Thought I’d cut-n-paste it here:
Tagging is tres-cool, however I’m not sure about this microformat - there are a couple of warts IMO:

Not a biggie, but at first glance the format looks like yo ... Continue reading »

6 comments

  • ryan king

    3 years ago

    I think having a URL as a tag has some great benefits:

    I don't think it implies that others who've used the same tag mean precisely the same thing, just as is the case in folksonomies such as del.icio.us.
    You don't have to link to Technorati's tag space if that doesn't suit you. You can link to any tag space you like.
    Have a URL allows readers to see some explanation of the tag. For example I link my tags to wikipedia often (even though I work for Technorati :)). The wikipedia explains what I mean by the tag. Technorati tags are useful in that they say "this post is a part of that conversation" and work pretty well for that.
    <span rel="tag"></span> is not valid (X)HTML, nor is the 'rel' attribute meaninful in this case. As it is defined as: "describ[ing] the relationship from the current document to the anchor specified by the href attribute." With your proposal, there's no relationship to describe.


    As I've said before regardin author tagging vs. reader tagging, it is obvious that they are different and and have different benefits. But I don't see why this is an argument against author tagging- they're not mutually exclusive.
    reply
  • ryan king

    3 years ago

    sorry. my markup got all destroyed in that comment. There was supposed to be an <ol> in there.
    reply
  • Prentiss Riddle

    3 years ago

    I'd seen a couple of other people criticize this scheme as too Technorati-centric and bought it until I read the part of the spec about "tag spaces":

    "Since the only part of a tag space URL of which any structure is required is the last segment, a tag space URL can be hosted at any domain."

    http://microformats.org/wiki/reltag#Tag_Spaces

    Maybe a URL-free version of this idea would have been better, but it's not true that Technorati has excluded other players on this point.

    A question: what tag spaces are people actually linking to out there? I'm guessing it's mostly Technorati and a smattering of Wikipedia and del.icio.us; any other significant targets?
    reply
  • PhilDawes

    3 years ago

    Prentiss Riddle writes:
    Maybe a URL-free version of this idea would have been better, but it's not true that Technorati has excluded other players on this point.

    Hi Prentiss,
    My concern wasn't with any technorati-centricness of the scheme - it's clear technorati are being very open and keen to produce standards for the benefit of all. Just that I wasn't sure the URL portion added any value in return for its additional complexity over a simple tag, and may have implied semantics* not adequately supported by the scheme.

    (i.e. 'I mean the same as all the other people using this tag in the tagspace')
    reply
  • PhilDawes

    3 years ago

    Ryan King writes:
    I don't think it implies that others who've used the same tag mean precisely the same thing, just as is the case in folksonomies such as del.icio.us.
    You don't have to link to Technorati's tag space if that doesn't suit you. You can link to any tag space you like.
    Have a URL allows readers to see some explanation of the tag. For example I link my tags to wikipedia often (even though I work for Technorati :)). The wikipedia explains what I mean by the tag. Technorati tags are useful in that they say "this post is a part of that conversation" and work pretty well for that.

    Hmmm.. Maybe. I guess I'm stuck on URIs=precision because I've been so involved with RDF in the past.

    <span rel="tag"></span> is not valid (X)HTML, nor is the 'rel' attribute meaninful in this case. As it is defined as: "describ[ing] the relationship from the current document to the anchor specified by the href attribute." With your proposal, there's no relationship to describe.

    Oops - that probably should have been <span class="tag">apple</span> or something.
    reply
  • Mike Schinkel

    2 years ago

    I just came across this post after futureofwebapps-sf06 and I have to somewhat agree, but have other issues. I recently started trying to use the rel="tag" microformat and found it counter-intuitive, which tells me it could often get misused.

    Further, for many websites it is difficult to implement a URL w/o a file extension i.e. IIS5 and IIS6 based websites, for example (note that this fact infuriates me [see http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blog/WellDesignedUR..., but it is still a fact.)

    What's more, RSSBlog has a great point about re="tag" contrbuting PageRank inappropriately: http://www.kbcafe.com/rss/?guid=20050619130051

    L:astly, it doesn't allow associating meaning of a tag with a URL that doesn't end with tag itself, which to me is very limiting.

    JMTCW
    reply

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