Re: Suggestion: 'rel="unrelated"'

David Woolley wrote:
>>[2] http://lachy.id.au/blogs/log/2004/08/link-relationships
> 
> I had a look at this, and I think it is making some of the same mistakes
> as Google.

Yes, I realise that now after invetestigating the issue a little more, 
but I didn't when I wrote that back in August last year.

> - It is limiting the markup to links when it is the whole third party 
>   contribution that is questionable;

Yes, indeed.  Although, marking the entire contribution as questionable 
would require the addition of a new attribute or element which isn't 
really feasable, nor valid, for current HTML documents.

However, the problem with an element or attribute that allows the 
marking off of content is, that it may be (ab)used inappropriately for 
marking off the whole page.

> - It is using what is intended to be a relationship name to act as a
>   personal rating;

Yes, which is why I have dropped all the categories used for rating from 
my latest proposal, which I outlined earlier today [1].  The endorsment 
category does remain and it is certainly questionable as to whether or 
not is like a rating system, but people have been asking for such 
facilities, which has resulted in nofollow.

> - It fails to distinguish between the cases of a resource that is 
>   useless and one that is a good example of how not to do things 
>   (the latter being, in my view, a legitimate link type relationship).

Could you please explain this a little futher, I'm not sure I quite 
understand.

> Also, it seems to me that it is re-inventing rating systems.  Although
> PICS is only really used for censorship ratings...

At the time I was unaware of such rating systems, though I had 
discovered them soon after and reached that same conclusion.

[1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2005Jan/0073.html
-- 
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/
http://GetFirefox.com/    Rediscover the Web
http://SpreadFirefox.com/   Igniting the Web

Received on Saturday, 22 January 2005 14:35:09 UTC