4 ms·

Any feedback on this? I'd appreciate it since I'm not especially familiar with the technical ins and outs of HTML5 or web standards in general. I know there's p

by rriepe 17y ago

Any feedback on this? I'd appreciate it since I'm not especially familiar with the technical ins and outs of HTML5 or web standards in general. I know there's plenty on HN who could help me here.

jlangenauer 17y ago
It seems to me that perhaps it's more appropriate to do as a micro-format, and while common, perhaps not common enough to include in the base HTML spec. The new tags in HTML 5 are semantic in terms of the structure of a document, (e.g. header, footer, article, nav) rather than the semantics of the document content. One could argue, I guess, that the disclosure is a valid part of the document structure rather than content (though it doesn't really seem so to me). In any case, it may be a bit too narrow in scope - the reason the new tags were put into HTML5 was that Opera analysed 3.5m web pages, to find what designers were using as class/id tags in actual use. If disclosure was such a common concern, it would have likely showed up in their sample.
- rriepe 17y ago
  Great points. There's definitely a grey area over whether it's structure or content. I'd say the same for the time tag, though. I'd argue that disclosure has only really become important recently. The FTC rulings took effect only four months ago. I haven't heard of other governments taking similar measures yet, but I'm sure it will happen. I guess I'd rather see measures taken in preparation, rather than measures taken in reaction.
- youngian 17y ago
  Yeah, this screams microformat. Indicates a specific type of content, but doesn't have to make it into the spec and can be administered in a decentralized fashion. http://microformats.org/ http://microformats.org/
  - rriepe 17y ago
    Thanks for the link!
pixelbath 17y ago
It seems...redundant? The goal of HTML5 is not to include every conceivable tag in its specification, but to provide a common platform that rendering clients can all agree that "yeah, this describes the content, so render This Semantic Content in This Uniform Way." If you want a disclaimer, put it in a paragraph tag with the text "disclaimer" enclosed within an emphasis tag. I don't understand how enclosing a disclaimer inside of a special tag makes any difference to a search engine (which is really what "the semantic web" is intended for). Cory Doctorow's short essay entitled Metacrap (http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm) cuts right to the heart of this idea, as he talks about the problems with semantic markup.
- TheThomas 17y ago
  The purpose of the semantic web is parsing of documents in general, not JUST search engine parsing of documents. A disclosure tag would enable services such as aggregators (which the author mentions specifically), to deal with disclosures consistently. Given the recently raised legal implications surrounding this issue, it sounds like a pretty good idea to me.
  - pixelbath 17y ago
    I understand your and the original author's intention for the tag, but I think the author is operating under several flawed assumptions. Portability: The author mentions the original disclaimer text being lost with a site's content being aggregated. How would adding a new tag change this? As happens now, some aggregators will choose to take this information, some will not, and the disclosure text may or may not be lost anyway. The use of tags do not confer control over how content is presented. Separation: I can agree with this on the merit of semantics, and it speaks to the data-centric part of my brain. But while the logical part of my brain says "yes" to semantically describing the content, it still seems like a "pet" tag to have. The pool of available tags should not be made even larger, in my opinion. May as well just have rant, parody, cartoon-reference, and lolcat tags while we're at it (lolcats are even, I would argue, more ubiquitous than disclosures). Style: If I understand the author's intention correctly here, he is stating that marking up a disclosure would make the writer more apt to create styling for it? If the author is implying that designers skip styling a disclosure because it's not marked up correctly, or that a disclosure is more difficult to mark up than other portions of a site, then I disagree with this assertion. Given the legal ramifications of providing or not providing a disclosure, you're better off focusing on the disclosure content than how it's marked up.
warfangle 17y ago
If you have a site-wide disclosure policy, why not simply utilize the rel attribute of the anchor element? e.g., <a href="domain.com/disclosure.html" rel="disclosure">Our Disclosure Policy</a>
scott_s 17y ago
It's too specific, too lightweight, and there's no existing precedent. The purpose of the HTML specification is to standardize and formalize how pages are structure, not predict every corner case. For example, many sites are now embedding videos, which is a heavyweight activity. So HTML is being extended to be able to say "This is an embedded video" so that browsers can handle the nitty-gritty details, not people who make webpages. Disclaimers are not heavyweight. They're usually a single sentence. That's what I mean by "too lightweight." It's too specific because very few people have to put up disclaimers - yes, few people have to, say, embed video, but embedding video has more performance implications on the browser, and many people will view such pages. It's not worth the corner case for something as small and specific as a disclaimer. Lastly, the trend in HTML standardization seems to be "formalize existing practices." I don't think there's an existing practice for disclaimers beyond just putting a sentence or two at the beginning or the end. Finally, I think that re-postings of a review could cause legal trouble beyond the original posting is a weak argument. And in the case of a re-posting, I don't see how adding a semantically tagged disclaimer would help - the HTML probably wouldn't be copied over, so the semantic tagging would be lost, and if the copier picked up the semantically tagged disclaimer, they'd pick up a plain text disclaimer, too.
- rriepe 17y ago
  Thanks. That's the kind of reply I was looking for. I guess it will depend a lot on how people implement disclosures over the next few years. When HTML6 comes around, hopefully I'll get a chance to dust off this article.

by rriepe 17y ago

Any feedback on this? I'd appreciate it since I'm not especially familiar with the technical ins and outs of HTML5 or web standards in general. I know there's plenty on HN who could help me here.

jlangenauer 17y ago

It seems to me that perhaps it's more appropriate to do as a micro-format, and while common, perhaps not common enough to include in the base HTML spec. The new tags in HTML 5 are semantic in terms of the structure of a document, (e.g. header, footer, article, nav) rather than the semantics of the document content. One could argue, I guess, that the disclosure is a valid part of the document structure rather than content (though it doesn't really seem so to me). In any case, it may be a bit too narrow in scope - the reason the new tags were put into HTML5 was that Opera analysed 3.5m web pages, to find what designers were using as class/id tags in actual use. If disclosure was such a common concern, it would have likely showed up in their sample.

rriepe 17y ago
Great points. There's definitely a grey area over whether it's structure or content. I'd say the same for the time tag, though. I'd argue that disclosure has only really become important recently. The FTC rulings took effect only four months ago. I haven't heard of other governments taking similar measures yet, but I'm sure it will happen. I guess I'd rather see measures taken in preparation, rather than measures taken in reaction.
youngian 17y ago
Yeah, this screams microformat. Indicates a specific type of content, but doesn't have to make it into the spec and can be administered in a decentralized fashion. http://microformats.org/ http://microformats.org/
- rriepe 17y ago
  Thanks for the link!

pixelbath 17y ago

It seems...redundant? The goal of HTML5 is not to include every conceivable tag in its specification, but to provide a common platform that rendering clients can all agree that "yeah, this describes the content, so render This Semantic Content in This Uniform Way." If you want a disclaimer, put it in a paragraph tag with the text "disclaimer" enclosed within an emphasis tag. I don't understand how enclosing a disclaimer inside of a special tag makes any difference to a search engine (which is really what "the semantic web" is intended for). Cory Doctorow's short essay entitled Metacrap (http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm) cuts right to the heart of this idea, as he talks about the problems with semantic markup.

TheThomas 17y ago
The purpose of the semantic web is parsing of documents in general, not JUST search engine parsing of documents. A disclosure tag would enable services such as aggregators (which the author mentions specifically), to deal with disclosures consistently. Given the recently raised legal implications surrounding this issue, it sounds like a pretty good idea to me.
- pixelbath 17y ago
  I understand your and the original author's intention for the tag, but I think the author is operating under several flawed assumptions. Portability: The author mentions the original disclaimer text being lost with a site's content being aggregated. How would adding a new tag change this? As happens now, some aggregators will choose to take this information, some will not, and the disclosure text may or may not be lost anyway. The use of tags do not confer control over how content is presented. Separation: I can agree with this on the merit of semantics, and it speaks to the data-centric part of my brain. But while the logical part of my brain says "yes" to semantically describing the content, it still seems like a "pet" tag to have. The pool of available tags should not be made even larger, in my opinion. May as well just have rant, parody, cartoon-reference, and lolcat tags while we're at it (lolcats are even, I would argue, more ubiquitous than disclosures). Style: If I understand the author's intention correctly here, he is stating that marking up a disclosure would make the writer more apt to create styling for it? If the author is implying that designers skip styling a disclosure because it's not marked up correctly, or that a disclosure is more difficult to mark up than other portions of a site, then I disagree with this assertion. Given the legal ramifications of providing or not providing a disclosure, you're better off focusing on the disclosure content than how it's marked up.

warfangle 17y ago

If you have a site-wide disclosure policy, why not simply utilize the rel attribute of the anchor element? e.g., <a href="domain.com/disclosure.html" rel="disclosure">Our Disclosure Policy</a>

scott_s 17y ago

It's too specific, too lightweight, and there's no existing precedent. The purpose of the HTML specification is to standardize and formalize how pages are structure, not predict every corner case. For example, many sites are now embedding videos, which is a heavyweight activity. So HTML is being extended to be able to say "This is an embedded video" so that browsers can handle the nitty-gritty details, not people who make webpages. Disclaimers are not heavyweight. They're usually a single sentence. That's what I mean by "too lightweight." It's too specific because very few people have to put up disclaimers - yes, few people have to, say, embed video, but embedding video has more performance implications on the browser, and many people will view such pages. It's not worth the corner case for something as small and specific as a disclaimer. Lastly, the trend in HTML standardization seems to be "formalize existing practices." I don't think there's an existing practice for disclaimers beyond just putting a sentence or two at the beginning or the end. Finally, I think that re-postings of a review could cause legal trouble beyond the original posting is a weak argument. And in the case of a re-posting, I don't see how adding a semantically tagged disclaimer would help - the HTML probably wouldn't be copied over, so the semantic tagging would be lost, and if the copier picked up the semantically tagged disclaimer, they'd pick up a plain text disclaimer, too.

rriepe 17y ago
Thanks. That's the kind of reply I was looking for. I guess it will depend a lot on how people implement disclosures over the next few years. When HTML6 comes around, hopefully I'll get a chance to dust off this article.