[whatwg] Trying to work out the problems solved by RDFa

[Tab Atkins Jr.]

On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 5:13 PM, Ben Adida <ben at adida.net> wrote:
> Tab Atkins Jr. wrote:
>> This brings up different issues, however.
>
> Is inherent resistance to spam a condition (even a consideration) for
> HTML5? If so, where is the concern around <title>, which is clearly
> featured in search engine results?

Well, it's something that we probably want to keep in mind, because
it's so relevant for the success of any such proposal.  I wouldn't
want to lend support to a feature that turned out to be immediately
useless due to spam.  Lot of wasted effort on the WG's, Ian's, and
possibly browser developer's part.

To answer your specific question, <title> is under the control of the
site author, and search engines already have elaborate methods to tell
a spammy site from a hammy one, thus downranking them.

On the other hand, the hypothetical attack scenario I outlined was
about metadata that could be added to the page by external parties.

If we were today discussing adding <title> to HTML5 to help search
engines provide a short summary of a page, and part of the proposal
might allow blog commenters to change the title of pages on a whim,
I'd certainly be equally concerned.  ^_^

~TJ