Hi there,
Secondly, I joined because of XPN, an 'XHTML Professionals Network' microformat. I thought this up at the end of December, and tried to
Well my immediate question is why not simply extend XFN? Really XFN represents a small subset of all possible social relationships; and I can think of problems trying to separate friends and professional relationships - especially in the web industry. Case in point: my XFN blogroll includes people who are both friends and clients. I'm not going to double up my blogroll :) I'd rather see a single "relationships" microformat which incorporates XFN and XPN.
I imagined the XPN as a way to define client/developer (rel="client", rel="developer") relationships, and built from there. For example, add freelancer to it (rel="developer freelancer") or define what part you did on the website (rel="client sliced", rel="client design")
In my view, there is no difference in the *business* relationship between the designer+client and the developer+client - they are both providing a service to the client. Both the designer and developer would classify the client as "client" when linking to them. To put it another way, you have to be careful about whether you're defining the *relationship* or the job title (which would be better placed in an hCard).
An XPN could be expanded to other business sectors as well, but it seems smart to start with the web development one.
I don't see an immediate need to create a microformat specific to professional relationships in the web industry. They are after *just business relationships*, the subject matter doesn't change them :) I suppose it does depend on just how granular you want to get; but off the top of my head I can think of: client, partner, competitor, employer, employee, boss, worker... none of these roles are specific to any business. I suppose if you ultimately wanted to specify down to specific job titles, you'd need to separate industries - but that would be impractical to say the least :)
I don't know if an XPN should be part of XFN or next to it. I would say next to it, because it's a different thing. But you could also argue that it's a continuation of XFN and as such, should be part of it.
My vote is definitely that it should be part of XFN - possibly requiring a name change of course, but it should all be part of one uf. Just my humble opinion of course. cheers, Ben -- --- <http://www.200ok.com.au/> --- The future has arrived; it's just not --- evenly distributed. - William Gibson _______________________________________________ microformats-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://microformats.org/mailman/listinfo/microformats-discuss
