Comment Formats

There have been several efforts to define data formats for posting a "comment" on the Web. This page serves to document the current list of comment schemas, formats, and efforts as background for the design of a simple comment microformat.

Contrbutors

• Chris Messina
• Stephanie Booth
• Martin McEvoy

Current Comment Formats

Movable Type

Example [1]

<div class="comments-body">
<p>Congratulations!  Any list that includes Molly Holzschlag and Wil Wheaton is certainly something... 
and that's just the Honorable Mentions.</p>

<p>Now to scrape the links of all the rest of those "people you may not know but probably should"...</p>
<span class="comments-post">Posted by: 
<a href="http://www.brianstorms.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi?__mode=red&id=3826">Chris</a> 
at June 21, 2005 08:53 PM</span>
</div>

CommentAPI

Example [2],

This is not XHTML, but still should be useful as an example of expressing comments structurally.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding='iso-8859-1'?>
<item>
  <title>Foo Bar</title>
  <author>joe@bitworking.org</author>
  <link>http://www.bar.com/</link>
  <description>My Excerpt</description>
</item>

XOXO Blog Format

Example [3]

Comment subset and suggested extension to hatom

 <ul class="xoxo comments">
    <li id="c836428">
       Posted on <a href="COMMENT PERMALINK" title="COMMENT TIMESTAMP (unix timestamp in seconds or nanoseconds)">COMMENT DATE POSTED</a>
   by <a href="AUTHOR URL">AUTHOR NAME</a>
      <dl>
         <dt>body</dt>
            <dd>COMMENT BODY</dd>
      </dl>
   </li>
 </ul>

Wordpress

Example [4]

<ol id="commentlist">
	<li class="alt" id="comment-1143">
	<h3 class="commenttitle"><a href='http://www.derriere-le-hublot.com' rel='external nofollow'>virginie</a> said,</h3>
	<p class="commentmeta">June 6, 2006 @ <a href="#comment-1143" title="Permanent link to this comment">9:02 pm</a></p>
	<p>Nice hairdo! I really think it suits you! And the color is different from the last times, isn’t it?</p>
	</li>
</ol>

Blogger

Example [5]

<dl id='comments-block'>
   <dt class='comment-author openid-comment-icon' id='c5069974981380830367'>
      <a name='c5069974981380830367'></a>
      <a href='http://meme-rocket.com/' rel='nofollow'>Bill</a>
      said...
   </dt>

   <dd class='comment-body'>
      <p>testing an OpenID comment</p>
   </dd>
   <dd class='comment-footer'>
      <span class='comment-timestamp'>
         <a href='http://jamesfostofapfz.blogspot.com/2008/09/if-your-goal-is-customer-loyalty-then.html?showComment=1222259520000#c5069974981380830367' title='comment permalink'>
            September 24, 2008 5:32 AM
         </a>
         <span class='item-control blog-admin pid-216793578'>
            <a href='http://www.blogger.com/delete-comment.g?blogID=6882271259081968971&postID=5069974981380830367' title='Delete Comment'>
               <img src='http://www.blogger.com/img/icon_delete13.gif'/>
            </a>
         </span>
      </span>
   </dd>
</dl>

Atom Threading Extension

Example: [6]

<entry>
     <id>tag:example.org,2005:1,1</id>
     <title>A response to the original</title>
     <updated>2006-03-01T12:12:12Z</updated>
     <link href="http://www.example.org/entries/1/1" />
     <thr:in-reply-to
       ref="tag:example.org,2005:1"
       type="application/xhtml+xml"
       href="http://www.example.org/entries/1"/>
     <summary>This is a response to the original entry</summary>
</entry>

More examples should go here...