Re: Checking in on Comics work

Thanks, Richard!  Ooh- I somehow hadn't noticed examples at the bottom of the schema pages- trying too read through too many things at once, I guess :-)And now I also see PublicationVolume on the wiki- thanks for those links!  I think I understand this a bit better now.  The system in general seems very flexible, I just need to get my head around it.  I gather that we would just use a PublicationVolume type for a comic book volume, as there is no ComicVolume and it doesn't seem necessary to have one.
  Periodicals such as scholarly journals have a well-structured volume system.  Or at least often have a well-structured volume system.  Comic books tend to be messier.  I'm willing to bet that other periodicals from the more fly-by-night realms of publishing are similarly messy, but I don't know enough about that to be sure.
  With comics (and I'm only covering U.S. comics in this example), at times there has been a volume number within a series, and the issue number may or may not reset when the volume increments.  But those volume numbers (particularly when the issue numbers do not reset, as was the case with DC for many years) are rarely noticed.  What people often refer to when they're talking about "volumes" is successive series that re-use the same title such as "Captain America".  The number of series with the same title may or may not bear any relationship to a volume number.  A later series may label itself "volume 1" again.
  Going back to the identification topic, if you already know the series, then yes an issue should be identifiable by the volume number (if any) and issue number or title.  There are some pathological exceptions, but there always are.  Publishers are weird, and unconcerned with anyone trying to index and identify their output.  Where we tend to run into more trouble is identifying the series properly. I'll get into that more later once I've had a chance to digest more of the schema.org system.
thanks,-henry
      From: Richard Wallis <richard.wallis@dataliberate.com>
 To: hha1@cornell.edu 
Cc: Dan Brickley <danbri@google.com>; "public-schemabibex@w3.org" <public-schemabibex@w3.org>; Dan Scott <dan@coffeecode.net> 
 Sent: Monday, October 5, 2015 1:57 AM
 Subject: Re: Checking in on Comics work
   
Hi Henry,
Some great input here, and in you further couple of emails on issues, variants, etc. 
Let me give you a bit of background on how we got to where we are and answer some of your questions.
The comic proposals were introduced as part of the bibliographic extension (bib.schema.org) proposed by the Schema Bib Extend W3C Community Group, which I chair.  You will see the proposal as it took shape documented in the group Wiki [1][2].  Much of this effort was promoted and put together by excellent work from group member Dan Scott.
The bib extension as it currently stands, and is going through the process that Dan Brickley has explained, is hopeful the first part of what will hopefully become an evolving extension to Schema.org.  This being based upon, demonstrated, need, experience, and usage.  As part of that I have recently mailed the group as to candidates for next steps.  Your thoughts could easily form part of that.
As to some of your questions.
   
   - Are all fields potentially multi-value? - as per the rest of schema.org, all properties are both optional, and potentially repeatable.  So for example you could say:   
<http://coms.example.com/com1>   
     a schema:ComicIssue;   
     schema:name "My Favourite Comic";   
     schema:isPartOf "Best European Comics";   
     schema:isPartOf "Hits from 2010".   
   

   - Issues & Volumes - The Comics proposal was built upon the already established Periodicals proposal which contains some useful examples demonstrating the isPartOf/hasPart properties to interrelate the issues, volumes, and their parent Periodical.  These examples are repeated in the Schema.org pages.  Your question suggests to me that we should repeat at least one of the example on PublicationIssue for ComicIssue.   
   

   - Reliable unique identification - one of the main objectives of using Schema.org is make what you describe discoverable. If the unique identification you describe could play a role in that, and you have a good insight into how well such terms may be used, proposals would be welcome.   
   

   - Variants - I believe the variantCover property was to address the artwork side of things.  Could variantName be satisfied by using alternateName?   
   

   - Further comments, question, proposals - keep them coming!
~Richard.


Richard WallisFounder, Data Liberatehttp://dataliberate.com
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/richardwallis
Twitter: @rjw



On 5 October 2015 at 06:29, <hha1@cornell.edu> wrote:


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From: Dan Brickley <danbri@google.com>To: hha1@cornell.edu Cc: "public-schemabibex@w3.org" <public-schemabibex@w3.org> Sent: Sunday, October 4, 2015 9:17 PMSubject: Re: Checking in on Comics work

There's no fixed timeline. Basically when we launched v2.1 with thebib and auto extensions, our main focus was on getting the underlyingsite infrastructure in a functional state, so we throw together some"this might yet change" wording as a warning that the actual contentof the extensions might yet change. Since all of schema.org tends toevolve slowly and continue changing, this should not be too shocking.
It would be really helpful if you can share any feedback on how wellthe current comic-related schemas and vocab match your dataset andapplication...
Dan



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Thanks, that all makes sense.  I'll take a look at how things line up.  I was just looking at ComicIssue and started writing up a few things, but it got really long so I think I will start a new thread on each of the longer topic.  Here are a few simple questions:
* Are all fields potentially multi-value?  In particular "isPartOf"?  Issues do sometimes belong to multiple series, and there's a range of cases around content simultaneously published in multiple places.  It may be that the schema can handle this just by only looking at one situation at a time- we don't actually handle these multiple parent cases very well right now, but we want to.
* I saw a reference to a "volume number" in the intro text for ComicIssue, but I don't see a volume field on either ComicIssue or ComicSeries.  Am I missing something?
* Are you interested in comments on information that is not addressed in your schema at all?  If I see something that I think is of core importance, I will mention that, but there are other things that are a bit farther afield.  For instance, we track publisher branding and the brand emblems (logo or a text tagline) that appear on issues.  We also track a lot of format and physical descriptions (magazine, hardcover, softcover, what kind of paper, what kind of binding, etc.).  I guess I'm trying to figure out what is in vs out of scope for you.
* One big thing that I don't see is reprint tracking- this is a *huge* focus for many of our indexers.  I see that you have translations handled, but a lot of people want to find out if there is an attainable publication of a particular story (trade paperback collection, or a modern reprint of an otherwise prohibitively expensive older comic).
OK, I'll pause here :-)
thanks,-henry