Chris Messina and others have been beating the drum slowly for the notion of Plain Old Semantic HTML, or POSH. I’ve been a fan of the rough concept for quite some time. I posted Microformats: working group vs. meme back in December, touching on this point. While my email wasn’t the best, I wanted to try to do something to make microformats more approachable for potential format-creators.

In my mind, POSH may fill the “meme gap” that exists between what microformats could be (i.e., heuristics for developing machine-friendly semantic HTML) and what microformats are (i.e., the output of a working group or standards body). I have no problems with working groups and standards bodies in general. In the case of microformats, I have no problem with their mission (“pave the cow paths”), so long as it’s recognized that not everything necessarily will start out as a microformat.

In my case, xDebate is a wandering herd of steer. While a microformat may arise in the xDebate space someday — and while it might even be xDebate or something derived from it — we must create the cow paths first. Then, and only then, can and should the cow path be paved.

For a lot of people (well, OK, at least me), the advent of microformats was an eye opener. Not that microformats are a huge technical innovation, but I hadn’t realized that true semantic HTML was anywhere near “back in vogue”. Using POSH as a means of separating experimentation and adhocracy from the standardization offered by microformats is huge, and I thank Mr. Messina and the others who have been pushing POSH.

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