Charles, Regarding semantic markup... Indeed. That's why i made mention of XFN earlier to imply that taking the same concepts of people relations through semantics (my profiles and friends profiles and discovering connections), the same should be applied to the conversations being had among these people.
If you are posting a response to another post (barring trackback/pingback/linkback), making use of semantic markup can build the graph that can be mapped out and presented logically. a simple rel or rev with url to the permalink and/or media file along with other sensible extensions is how this thing should sprout I've thought a little on what structure can be applied. When thinking about media pooling, such as the Semanal video pool.... its not truly about commenting, replying and responding. its about contributing and participating. But a contributed video to Semanal can also be a response to another video. So it might make sense to focus on multiple methods and means to interconnecting media and people in ways that can be trailed via web services and plugins to common platforms such as WP, Drupal etc. As far as output... how it all would look and feel. that's maybe a bit moot in the beginning stages because once the groundwork is in place, then developers and designers can have infinite ways to present the relationships and content. I think MIke pointed that out earleir in this thread or somewhere. It's all challenging and definately the look and feel discussion is important and should be happening concurrently... with people doing mockups and prototypes. But some level of samepageism needs to be set. sull
