This seems to be a citation issue... since we need to be able to cite the author of a theme, just like you use blockquote to cite the creator of a photo or piece of text.
Scoping becomes an issue quickly, as rel="designer" could apply to a local widget in the sidebar or to the entire theme; additionally, for open source themes that are customized, links are often left to give credit to the source even if that original author isn't responsible for the derivative works. I wonder if this is really an issue for rel-license, where in linking to the creator of the theme, you also link to the license -- in that way making it optional to filter out links that go back to the author in the context of a license block. Alternatively, there's already a mechanism for this, which designers won't really like (I know I wouldn't, but those default links are a form of false-linking), and that's a general good-behavior agreement to mark up themer links with rel-nofollow. Just a few thoughts. Chris On 8/4/06, Andy Skelton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi again uf-discuss! I came across rel="designer" in a WordPress blog theme and it struck me that this could help alleviate the problem of artificially high numbers of incoming links causing some blogs to be banned from ranking services such as Technorati. This could be improved to encompass more default links, as Tantek suggests below. I'm interested in what this list can add. Andy Skelton ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Tantek Çelik <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Aug 3, 2006 5:27 PM Subject: Re: Theme designer woes To: Andy Skelton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Andy, I agree that this is definitely a problem, not only for theme designers but also for the "lead developers" like Matt who are in the blogroll by default. Matt is one of my good friends, and this problem has been perplexing me pretty much since I started at Technorati :( Your suggestion of using a rel value to indicate that the link goes to the designer of the template is an interesting one. I'm wondering if we should have some more generic term that indicates that the link was part of the template, and thus could apply it to other links. Would you mind if we moved this discussion to the microformats-discuss mailing list? I would prefer to develop this microformat out in the open. Thanks, Tantek On 8/3/06 11:43 AM, "Andy Skelton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Tantek, > > At WordPress.com we're trying to tackle the problem of theme designers > being banned from Technorati. We made the first move by adding > rel="designer" to the links in the theme footers. Is this something > you can use? > > If you do find this useful, we'll push for broad adoption among designers. > > Cheers, > Andy _______________________________________________ microformats-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
-- Chris Messina Agent Provocateur, Citizen Agency & Open Source Ambassador-at-Large Work: http://citizenagency.com Blog: http://factoryjoe.com/blog Cell: 412 225-1051 Skype: factoryjoe This email is: [ ] bloggable [X] ask first [ ] private _______________________________________________ microformats-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
