Conversational interfaces
Technical note
I have marked up the protagonist of each conversation using the cite
element. There is a long-running dispute over the use of this element. In HTML 4.01 it was perfectly fine to use cite
to mark up a person being quoted. In the HTML Living Standard, usage has been narrowed:
The
cite
element represents the title of a work (e.g. a book, a paper, an essay, a poem, a score, a song, a script, a film, a TV show, a game, a sculpture, a painting, a theatre production, a play, an opera, a musical, an exhibition, a legal case report, a computer program, etc). This can be a work that is being quoted or referenced in detail (i.e. a citation), or it can just be a work that is mentioned in passing.A person’s name is not the title of a work — even if people call that person a piece of work — and the element must therefore not be used to mark up people’s names.
In the examples above, it’s pretty clear that I, Pencil and Warlock Of Firetop Mountain are valid use cases for the cite
element according to the HTML5 definition; they are titles of works. But what about Clippy or Little Moo or Slackbot? They’re not people …but they’re not exactly titles of works either.
If I were to mark up a dialogue between Eliza and a human being, should I only mark up Eliza’s remarks with cite
? In text transcripts of conversations with Alexa, Siri, or Cortana, should only their side of the conversation get attributed as a source? Or should they also be written without the cite
element because it must not be used to mark up people’s names …even though they are not people, according to conventional definition.
It’s downright botist.