[Please note important boldface corrections in this post – Feb. 1, 2022]

Just in case you’ve started getting notifications on your Mac that “Software from ‘Fei Lv’ added items that can run in the background. You can manage this in Login Items Settings”, here’s an explanation that I could not find anywhere on the Internet.

This seems to be coming from NordPass [Nope. Coincidence.], which I have been trying out as a replacement for 1Pass. a password manager. I like 1Password and it is a well-regard and trust password manager, but it’s UI has been getting overly complex for my tastes, mainly because I’ve entered too many redundant, broken entries. I recommend 1Pass and will probably be going back to it. But NordPass was offering a great intro deal, and I’ve been a satisfied user of NordVPN for years now.

I started getting the annoying Fei Lv notifications, and struggled to find what app, piece of software, or sneaky malware was causing them. Apple does not make it easy. It’s relatively easy to find in the log that the notification is happening, but not which app “Fei Lv” applies to. Neither did Google or Bing searches.

Trial and error, however, worked well. It looks like it’s NordPass [Nope]. So, if you’re hearing from the mysterious Fei Lv, try turning off NordPass through System Preferences and see if that does the trick. [It won’t] It did for me [For a few days].

i’ll consider turning it back on if NordPass reassures me that Fei Lv isn’t some malware that snuck on to my computer. [NordPass is not the problem. I still don’t know what is.]

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It’s certain that this has already been suggested many times, and it’s highly likely it’s been implemented at least several times. But here goes:

Currently the convention for correcting an online mistake is to strikethrough the errant text and then put in the correct text. Showing one’s errors is a wonderful norm, for it honors the links others have made to the piece; it’s at best confusing when you post criticism of someone else’s work, but when the reader goes there the errant remarks have been totally excised. It’s also a visible display of humility.

But strikethrough text is a visual cue of a structural meaning. And it conveys only the fact that the text is wrong, not why it’s wrong.

So, why isn’t there Schema.org markup for corrections?

Schema.org is the set of simple markup for adding semantics to plain old Web pages. The reader can’t see the markup, but computers can. The major search engines are behind Schema.org, which means that if you mark up your page with the metadata they’ve specified, the search engines will understand your page better and are likely to up its ranking. (Here’s another post of mine about Schema.org.)

So, imagine there were simple markup you could put into your HTML that would let you note that some bit of text is errant, and let you express (in hidden text):

• When the correction was made

• Who made it

• Who suggested the correction, if anyone.

• When it was made

• What was wrong with the text

• A bit of further explanation

The corrected text might include the same sort of information. Plus, you’d want a way to indicate that these two pieces of text refer to one another; you wouldn’t want a computer getting confused about which correction corrects which errant text.

If this became standard, browsers could choose to display errant texts and their corrections however they’d like. Add-ons could be written to let users interact with corrections in different ways. For example, maybe you like seeing strikethroughs but I’d prefer to be able to hover to see the errant text. Maybe we can sign up to be notified of any corrections to an article, but not corrections that are just grammatical. Maybe we want to be able to do research about the frequency and type of corrections across sources, areas, languages, genders….

Schema.org could drive this through. Unless, of course, it already has.

Be sure to read the comment from Dan Brickley. Dan is deeply involved in Schema.org. (The prior comment is from my former college roommate.)

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