Re: Two proposals for schema.org/WebPage

>
> *"but it puzzles me how can it be that 10k to 50k sites use it"*


Speaking from own experience, during the first few years of using schema.org
I was under the impression that there was an actual value in specifying
them simply because they exist. Only after a couple of years, asking many
questions about them on the mailing list, did I come to understand that
just because something is part of the schema/org specs doesn't mean there's
much sense in using it.

In my experience there are plenty out there who look at schema.org the way
I did at first and simply apply markup because it's [a] par tof the specs,
and [b] because it's a very recognizable piece of markup for those who work
with HTML. Together making it likely candidates to end up in markup.

And I know there are also some Wordpress templates out there (by YOAST)
that contain this type of markup. And since these templates are doing
nicely from a commercial POVw I wouldn't be surprised if their templates
are responsible for a substantial part the sites that uses this type of
markup.

2015-08-10 12:58 GMT+02:00 Peter Mika <pmika@yahoo-inc.com>:

> I would agree to deprecate it, but it puzzles me how can it be that 10k to
> 50k sites use it (according to the stats), even though there are no usage
> examples and no consumers of this markup either (AFAIK).
>
> Dan, who are the top sites using this?
>
> Thanks,
> Peter
>
>
>
> On Sunday, August 9, 2015 9:57 PM, Jarno van Driel <
> jarnovandriel@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Agreed on keeping BreadcrumbList (after all, it's just new and very
> useful). My proposal is limited to deprecating schema.org/WebPageElement
> and it's subtypes.
>
> 2015-08-09 22:23 GMT+02:00 Paul Watson <lazarus@lazaruscorporation.co.uk>:
>
> Hi Jarno,
>
> No, I can see the logic in that - especially since HTML5 provides semantic
> elements for marking up similar web page "elements" (in  the form of nav,
> main, header, footer, etc.) and even if people aren't using HTML5 then
> these semantic web page elements can be indicated using WAI-ARIA roles. As
> such, the varios subtypes of WebPageElement can not only be seen as not
> describing real world entities but also a duplication of effort.
>
> But - and this is a big obstacle - I think we'd find it difficult to
> deprecate the BreadcrumbList type (which is the expected type of the
> breadcrumb property of WebPage) because of its very popular use in
> enriching how search engine results are displayed in Google ("rich
> snippets") and other search engines, regardless of the fact that
> BreadcrumbList doesn't describe a "real world entity".
>
> Paul
>
>
> On 09/08/15 20:37, Jarno van Driel wrote:
>
> May this year I suggested we deprecate WebPageElement and it's subtypes:
> https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-schemaorg/2015May/0014.html
>
> Personally I don't see the value of keeping these types anymore as they
> describe parts of web pages as opposed to real world entities. Do you any
> reasons why we shouldn't deprecate them Paul?  (not a rhetorical question,
> being serious here)
>
> 2015-08-09 10:06 GMT+02:00 Paul Watson <lazarus@lazaruscorporation.co.uk>:
>
> Hi
>
> I have been looking at schema.org/WebPage and have a couple of proposals
> I wanted to raise on this list before creating issues on Github:
>
> 1. Proposal: mainContentOfPage property should have expected type of
> schema.org/Thing
>
> At the moment the mainContentOfPage property has an expected type of
> WebPageElement. If we broadened this to Thing then an Article, NewsItem,
> Product etc. could be easily marked as the main subject of the page.
> Perhaps this needs to be considered alongside the recent work on
> mainEntityOfPage?
>
> 2. Proposal: method to explicitly attach schema.org/WebPageElement types
> to schema.org/WebPage
>
> There are a number of more specific "WebPageElement" types -
> SiteNavigationElement, Table, WPAdBlock, WPFooter, WPHeader, WPSideBar -
> but not way to explicitly attach them to a WebPage (apart from the ability
> to attach one of them as the mainContentOfPage, see above).
>
> Within schema.org/WebPage we also have a breadcrumb property that takes a
> type of BreadcrumbList.
>
> I think it would be good if there was a way to explicitly attach multiple
> WebPageElements (or child Types) to a WebPage - perhaps in the form of a
> pageElement property on WebPage. That way it would be easy to do something
> as follows:
>
> <body vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="WebPage">
>
>   <header property="pageElement" typeof="WPHeader">
>     <!-- header goes here -->
>   </header>
>
>   <nav property="pageElement" typeof="SiteNavigationElement">
>     <!-- navigation goes here -->
>   </nav>
>
>   <!-- main content of page goes here -->
>
>   <footer property="pageElement" typeof="WPFooter">
>     <!-- footer goes here -->
>   </footer>
>
> </body>
>
>
> Arguably BreadcrumbList should be relocated in the hierarchy to become a
> child type of WebPageElement, but that might overly-complicate this
> proposal.
>
> Regards,
>
> Paul
> --
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