UserPreferences

WeblogVsUrl


Discussion of using Weblogs vs. URLs

[TimBray] For people, the distinction between "homepage" and "weblog" seems shaky and of little value. Why don't we just limit ourselves to email address and web URI, this is what every comments system in the universe does and it seems to work fine.

[AaronSw] There seems to be a pretty clear distinction. For example, you have [WWW]a homepage and [WWW]a weblog. For many people these are on different domains (i.e. Cory Doctorow: [WWW]homepage, [WWW]blog, NormWalsh too, I think). While most UIs might only display one of these; I don't think it's a good idea to conflate them. You'll want the homepage when you want to know who someone is, but their weblog when you want to see what they think about something.

[DiegoDoval, RefactorOk] I agree with Tim: limit to one link, and with Asbjorn, change the name to something generic that encompases both weblog and homepage and identifies the "tracking back" to the source, which is I think the idea. Aaron's point is a good one, since homepages and weblogs are different. However, in practice either one will link to the other, and if people know that they want the homepage as opposed to the weblog (that is, if they belong to the group of people to whom the distinction makes sense at all), then they will know how to find one given the other. So I can't see a use-case for having two links: If it's a feed, intended to be used by tools and the weblog/homepage tags are meant to provide information about the creator, one link "back to the creator" is enough.

[DavidJanes, RefactorOk] Consider using an HTML <link>-link attribute, with roles and content being defined by "rel" and "name". Also considering how this can link to Foaf.

[AsbjornUlsberg] Why did <url> end up as the element? What's wrong with the already-in-use element <link>? What's so special about an author's URI that it needs a special element? I propose that we use <link> for all external URI's, or we rename everything to <url>. I really don't care what the name is as long as all URI's are encapsulated in the same type of element. If people want to distinguish author URI's from other URI's, we use attributes like "rel".