FOAF additions

[crschmidt]

Alright, I'm putting together updates to the FOAF information for the next version. I can't make any promises as to when it will go in, live, or even be passed onto a developer - this is a very rough draft of changes that I'm working on making.

Let me know if there's anything I missed.

Additions:

Comments

[jamesd]

For privacy, please suggest something like providing an empty file, or the minimal XML/FOAF equivalent. That way the FOAF applications won't need to understand what LJ is sending to follow the user privacy preference but will get nothing automatically.

FOAF for me points to the FOAF file for the news account, which seems unlikely to ever be valid. Not quite as friendly as directly telling the FOAF client that the user has blocked FOAF, but it does the job.

[jamesd]

Worth noting that pointing to news doesn't do as good a job as I'd like, for FOAF still gets quite a bit of information I want blocked from FOAF:

o that the account exists
o date of birth
o nic
o maybe email, though I have privacy on for email

[crschmidt]

The fact that the account exists can be determined in so many other ways that a FOAF file 404 is almost ridiculous in concept: if the account didn't exist, how would any tool know how to find it

[jamesd]

If a bot grabs the info from the user page of a user with robots set to noindex, that bot is, IMO, being operated contrary to the bots policy. If I notice a bot making any use at all of my user page, I'll object. Presumably if a bot does it regularly, the bot will be blocked until it behaves properly.

A robots.txt entry doesn't mean "hit this URL and see if you get a 404 or not, if it does, you'll know that it's there". It says "don't even try". So no, I don't think that it's permitted for a bot to see if an account exists by testing to see whether the user page exists.

Of course, I know that bot writers do often completely ignore instructions to bots. That's one reason why I suggested supplying nothing or absolutely minimal FOAF results. It would ensure that even a poorly behaved bot follows the rules, would simplify life for bot writers and would leave control firmly in the hands of LJ and the users.

Thanks for the birthdate. Not a problem to miss something early on - almost everything needs tweaking at first.

[andrewducker]

Any chance of the external users stuff?

[crschmidt]

Explain what you mean? I don't know what "external users" stuff means in this context?

[andrewducker]

You mean you aren't reading my mind?

Sorry, in the "what else would you like to see in FOAF?" post you put up a few days ago I said that it would be nice to be able to point to people outside of LJ and that one way to do that would be to allow for an 'insert point' where users could enter their own FOAF segment to be included in the one that LJ generates.

Am I making any sense?

[crschmidt]

Wow, I totally missed that comment.

I don't think we'll ever see something like that: that's basically what the extra URL is supposed to provide. Most tools use this as an extra source of information, so people would know to look there for more information.

So, you're probably better finding someplace to host your extra FOAF file, and then just linking to it from your LJ FOAF file.

This is why, though, I plan to make linking to an external source independant of turning the FOAF file on/off. That way, you can have your LJ FOAF file AND your external one, without having to maintain one from the other.

[taral]

Can we use ID instead of nodeID?

[crschmidt]

I don't really understand the difference: How do they work differently?

[taral]

If two nodes have the same nodeID, they are treated as the same node. If a node has an ID, it can be referenced by anchor, e.g.:

This required less processing overhead than the nodeID system.

[crschmidt]

ID actually generates a URI for the person node. Generating URIs for people is considered rude. So, I won't be doing that.

[theorb]

As far as the vCard stuff goes, I assume you mean as in http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/NOTE-vcard-rdf-20010222/? (OK, trying hard to phrase that -- just trying to annotate this with a link.)

What's the proper place to bring up proposals for new FOAF vocab? I'd like to bring up my country-postcode system somewhere useful...

[fool_in_spirit]

Hello, what about the "friend-of" list?
Any possibility that it might be added in the near future?
please

Pietro