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Schema.org — Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! Agree On Markup Vocabulary
aabelro writes "Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! have decided to propose a common markup vocabulary, Schema.org, based on the Microdata format, simplifying the job of webmasters who want to give meaning to their web pages' content."
Manu Sporny, chair of the W3C group that created RDFa, added his (personal) dissenting opinion about Schema, calling it a 'false choice,' and saying, "The entire Web community should decide which features should be supported – not just Microsoft or Google or Yahoo."
One of the reasons why Google was able to tromp AltaVista was that AltaVista's search was based completley on the MetaData tag of the html page, and Google ignored the MetaData tag. The reason why? Website administrator were putting false information into the MetaData tag in hopes of generating more web crawler search hits. Google decided to go off of what was actually being presetned on the page, and we all found that to be more useful.
The proposal is itself breaking html. This time, Google and Yahoo are in with the "extending". The vague promise of better search positions will drive web developers to completely muck up their html output. There is no reason not to re-use the Dublin Core.
The latter implies the former. I say go right back to XHTML 1.0 Strict (the last standard that didn't have a broken DTD) and concentrate on finally getting all the browsers to better implement SGML. For example, all of the itemprop, itemscope, and itemtype crap could be done better with processing instructions (say, pop an <?itemscope ?> tag thing and poof, done), without fucking up the markup. schema.org is trying (among other things, I guess) to help search engines better understand the page,* and PIs were made to tell applications how to process data, so it's a matter of getting them to play The Dating Game and meet.
Stop making HTML harder to validate and process, and start making browsers better conform--and developers more completely use--the many existing features in it and its underlying SGML or XML. That's Allstat^Wgame kid's stand.
*"However, the HTML tag doesn't give any information about what that text string means—"Avatar" could refer to the a hugely successful 3D movie, or it could refer to a type of profile picture—and this can make it more difficult for search engines to intelligently display relevant content to a user."
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.