Re: Visible MetaData == "Visible to whom?" was Re: Design Principles

Henri Sivonen wrote:
> On Mar 29, 2007, at 19:06, T.V Raman wrote:
>> A)  The metadata needs to be "visible" to the intended target.
>> B0- The metadata needs to be "invisible" to those it's not
>> intended for.
> The design principle aims to combine those cases when possible and 
> reasonable. When metadata is rendered to the user under the usual 
> browsing conditions, errors in the metadata are more likely to be 
> noticed and fixed. Metadata that is not rendered under the usual 
> conditions often gets copied as part of a template and is wrong.
This is an opinion that does a lot of damage to potential growth on the 
web, I think. It is used as a weapon against introducing mechanisms for 
metadata that may not be visible on the HTML page at the time of 
introduction, but that can become "visible" via other means.  Again, 
I'll point to T.oolicio.us as an example project whose goal is to 
empower to use of significant semantic metadata, much of it being 
"invisible" at first. I expect there will also be other tools that will 
leverage metadata, not just T.oolicio.us.

If mechanisms for adding metadata are empowered to be squashed by (IMO) 
short-sighted principles,  then many of the potential future benefits 
will be minimized.

-- 
-Mike Schinkel
http://www.mikeschinkel.com/blogs/
http://www.welldesignedurls.org
http://atlanta-web.org - http://t.oolicio.us
"It never ceases to amaze how many people will proactively debate away attempts to improve the web..."

Received on Thursday, 29 March 2007 17:40:40 UTC