From the folks that brought you microformats, we're now presented with POSH. The acronym stands for Plain Old Semantic HTML and is an encouragement to web developers to start with the basics before getting hung up in microformats.
I think it's a valuable effort and I applaud the folks who came up with the idea (Tantek, Jeremy Keith, Chris Messina, etc.) as there are a lot of folks who are super enthusiastic about microformats, but aren't as up-to-speed as they should be on markup. So, give the wiki page a look, and let me know what you think. Is the campaign a good idea? Are they wasting their time? Do we need another silly acronym?
I just took a look at the POSH page... personally, I'm all about microformats and I'm all about writing clean, semantic X/HTML, but I don't see the point to rename it "POSH". I understand why they created it because you should have a solid understanding of semantic X/HTML before diving into microformats, but just refer to it as what it's been referred to for years. That way, when new people discover microformats and want to learn more about semantic X/HTML, they can search the internet for articles and books on "Semantic HTML" and have access to years of information, as opposed to searching for "POSH" and finding a few months' worth of info on semantic HTML.
Although I must also say that they've compiled an excellent set of links related to semantic X/HTML on the microformats POSH page.
Just seems kind of odd. Who would be really doing microformats without already knowing the basics of html?? Anyone not doing occasional "refreshers" for themselves probably shouldn't be doing it in the first place.
@empirionx3: You'd be surprised. There's a lot of (maybe over-) enthusiasm from members new to the Microformats community who don't have a solid background in markup. Even outside the Microformats community, you've got a good percentage of web developers out there who haven't kept up with the progressions in the field.
This is one of the reasons we started Refresh DC. One of the goals is to reach out to people and bring them into the fold. Whether or not we're achieving that is up for debate, but I think it's in that spirit that the POSH "movement" was founded.