RE: hCard history and extensions (was Re: Date ofDeath in hCard)

I was under the impression that the purpose of hCard was to
provide a way to markup individual and organizational
contact information.  If this is the case, does date of
death make sense to include?  In general, I don't need to
contact someone who is no longer living.  

The original example that was given for a use case for
including date of death was in marking up genealogical
information.  Is this information truly contact information
or is it biographical information?

If I'm wrong in the assumption that hCard is only for
contact information, please let me know.  It seems that the
specification was created for this purpose but is being
applied to other purposes (which I guess isn't necessarily a
bad thing).

-----Original Message-----
From: microformats-discuss-bouncesmicroformats.org
[mailto:microformats-discuss-bouncesmicroformats.org] On Behalf
Of Andy Mabbett
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2007 2:11 PM
To: Microformats Discuss
Subject: Re: hCard history and extensions (was Re:
[uf-discuss] Date ofDeath in hCard)

In message <C2A93EEF.912A0%tantekcs.stanford.edu>, Tantek
Çelik 
<tantekcs.stanford.edu> writes

>For some of these I see quite a bit of utility (e.g.
"gender" is often 
>used in social network searches - an actual application
in common use), 
>whereas others seem to be merely driven by sense of
semantic publishing 
>completeness (e.g. date of death) and not by existing
applications.

On the contrary; you have been presented with evidence *and*
use cases 
for date-of-death more than once; not least in the first
post in this 
thread.

>Finally, any time you find yourself (or anyone else)
arguing a positive 
>from the absence of a negative, please call it out as a
logical flaw.
>
>I.e. statements of the form:
>
>"I can see no good reason why ABC
> should stop XYZ"
>
>... do not provide justification for XYZ.

Allow me to correct myself:

The justification for the hCard on that page including his
date of death 
(and places of birth and death, for that matter) is not
negated by the 
historical, almost accidental, relationship of hCard with
vCard.

-- 
Andy Mabbett

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In message <AD65D98B54D34C4282EE54757342469E9E1D8Atsmail3.terpsys.net>, 
"Montgomery, Mike" <MMontgomeryTerpSys.com> writes

>I was under the impression that the purpose of hCard was
to provide a 
>way to markup individual and organizational contact
information.  If 
>this is the case, does date of death make sense to
include?  In 
>general, I don't need to contact someone who is no
longer living.

Note that the only mandatory field in an hCard is name;
there is no 
requirement for any contact information to be included. It
is there fore 
implicit that hCard can be used to mark up that fact that
string of text 
identifies a person ("Fn") or organisation/ venue
("fn org"), and no 
more than that.

>If I'm wrong in the assumption that hCard is only for
contact 
>information, please let me know.  It seems that the
specification was 
>created for this purpose but is being applied to other
purposes (which 
>I guess isn't necessarily a bad thing).

It certainly isn't a bad thing, and its the default
behaviour in a 
number of cases.

Consider, for instance a geo microformat, wrapped in an
hCard with jsut 
an "fn org", as a labelled waypoint - no contact
info, but useful 
semantic information.

-- 
Andy Mabbett
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