On Fri, 08 Sep 2006 09:48:43 +0200, Henri Sivonen <hsivonen@iki.fi> wrote:
>
> But are the advantages more valuable than the cost of the human
> effort to put the metadata there? Are the advantages reaped by the
> same parties who bear the cost? What incentives do authors have to
> meticulously mark up their documents?
>

I am not sure I understand. Are you asking for a general answer for
all markup situations? Of course there is an advantage in all cases
where the author want to use metadata markup. You do it for a purpose.

If we take a step back from the search engine discussion there are
many uses for proper metadata and resource identification in an XHTML
2 document. In previous versions of (X)HTML it wasn't possible
(although there was a need for it which the evolution of microformats
proves). XHTML 2 will make it easier to make content a part of the
semantic web.