Re: "scheme" attribute of META element

On Tue, 4 Aug 2009, Tom Dent wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 7:27 PM, Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch> wrote:
> >
> > Could you show an example of how the scheme attribute affects the user
> > experience? I looked around but couldn't find any pages that actually
> > expose any of this data, so it wasn't clear to me whether any code other
> > than the validators and CMSes actually used it.
>
> The scheme does not directly impact on the user, but can (for example) 
> do so via search software.  You can see a view of IPSV at 
> http://www.esd.org.uk/standards/ipsv/viewer/ or LGSL at 
> http://www.esd.org.uk/standards/lgsl/viewer .
> 
> If a user searched for pages by using a "non-preferred term", the search 
> engine should convert that to an IPSV preferred term and then return all 
> content with that preferred term in its metadata (with the IPSV scheme).  
> The search software might also suggest showing content for broader and 
> narrower subject headings from the IPSV hierarchy.
> 
> The LGSL is being used to reference local authority sites in the UK 
> Government's Directgov site (at http://www.direct.gov.uk/) which is used 
> as a portal to local authority sites, and uses LGSL to reference pages.

This doesn't really seem like a very compelling use case. Surely more 
modern search technologies would be a significantly more effective way of 
addressing the same problem at the user level, but with a significantly 
better user experience? Can you walk me through what a typical user might 
search for in a way that metadata with a scheme would affect the result? 
I'm having trouble figuring out what a suitable "non-preferred term" might 
be. For example, I did a search on direct.gov.uk for "how do i report 
foreign income for tax purposes", which gave me the same top result as 
Google did for that same search (with a site restrict), and did not appear 
to be in any way affected by metadata terms that used schemes.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'

Received on Thursday, 13 August 2009 10:20:08 UTC