Talk:Ideas for relationship links for genealogical data

The problem I have with these approaches is one of getting widespread adoption. The argument of machine-processable data applies to many industries on the Web (product catalogs, B2B, jobs, travel, etc.) yet it seems notoriously difficult to get a particular data format widely adopted. Look at how little impact OASIS has had. Don't get me wrong - I agree that coming up with machine-processable standards for genealogical content is important. But I believe the best way to get widespread adoption of a new standard is to give away high-quality software that implements it. In the meantime, I think the best thing to do is follow the 80-20 rule: many genealogical pages on the Web post their data in easy-to-understand formats: transcription tables, pedigrees, descendency charts, etc. So teach a machine to process the most common of these human-understandable formats until widespread adoption of a machine-processable format becomes available.--Dallan 13:13, 29 March 2006 (MST)