Developers Wiki

microformats are:

• a way of thinking about data
• design principles for formats
• adapted to current behaviors and usage patterns (“pave the cow paths.” – adam rifkin)
• highly correlated with semantic xhtml, aka the real world semantics, aka lowercase semantic web, aka lossless xhtml
• described by tantek’s recent presentation at sxsw: the elements of meaningful xhtml
• a set of simple open data format standards that many (including technorati) are actively developing and implementing for more/better structured blogging and web microcontent publishing in general.
• “an evolutionary revolution” – ryan king
• all the above.

microformats are not:

• a new language
• infinitely extensible and open-ended
• an attempt to get everyone to change their behavior and rewrite their tools
• a whole new approach that throws away what already works today
• a panacea for all taxonomies, ontologies, and other such abstractions
• defining the whole world, or even just boiling the ocean
• any of the above