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The blogged wandering of Robert W. Anderson

Snark it up

March 6, 2006 at 10:22 am · Filed under Web 2.0

There has been much snarkiness in the blogosphere of late. Much has been written about the snarkiness. Much has been written about what has been written about the snarkiness.

What I think is missing from this discussion is an underlying framework to measure snarkiness. Doc Searls had the idea of a snarkiness slider; however, how will Technorati and others determine the level of snark?
To this end, I want to introduce the HyperText Snarkup Language (HTSL) which will initially be described as simply an extension of XHTML with a namespace. This will allow publishers to have full control over their snark.

First, an example:

<html . . . xmlns:snarkup='http://xmlns.hypersnark.org/snarkup/1.0/'>
  <snarkup:snark target="http://example.org" 
                 level="high" 
                 tone="unhinged" 
                 subtext="threatened" >
    This guy is an idiot!  He doesn't know ASP.NET from a hole in the ground.  
    I'm a real developer!  A technologist!  An inventor! 
  </snarkup:snark>
</html>

The snark tag
Allows the user to enclose snark text in tags to better identify the target of the snarkiness as well as the level, tone, and subtext.

<snarkup:snark target='href' level="low|medium|high" tone="even|sarcastic|abrasive|ironic|unhinged" subtext="none|veiledsuckup|allingoodfun|threatened" >

target allows the author to target a specific individual without a direct link. href is really a place holder for identity — I’ll wait to see how Identity 2.0 gets fleshed out.
level defaults to medium. tone defaults to even. subtext defaults to none.

The jumpthesnark tag

<snarkup:jumpthesnark href='href'/>

Allows the author to identify someone else’s post as going a step to far. Using this tag with no href (i.e., <snarkup:jumpthesnark/>) allows a publisher to self-identify this state.

Conclusion and a call for comment
It is my hope that HTSL will enable a host of new services. Like Snarkorati and Snarkorandum, and of course establishing the all important SnarkRank.

Feedback is welcome; I’m sure that the snark tags could use some enhancement.

<snarkup:snark target="www.scripting.com" level="low" tone="ironic" subtext="veiledsuckup">
If we can get adoption on this then we’ll be able to confirm Dave Winer’s claim that Nick Carr has the highest snark-to-information ratio.
</snarkup:snark>

Snark on!

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