schema.org v0.96 published, with 'additionalType' property on Thing

I've updated http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/SchemaDotOrgProposals#Added_.2F_Accepted
to record the addition of an 'additionalType' property to the
http://schema.org/Thing type; the version number for schema.org has
been bumped accordingly; we're now at v0.96.

The rather lengthy textual description reflects the concern several
parties had that we should discourage over-use of this property, and
represents the rough consensus we eventually reached.

An 'additionalType' of a Thing is ... "An additional type for the
item, typically used for adding more specific types from external
vocabularies in microdata syntax. This is a relationship between
something and a class that the thing is in. In RDFa syntax, it is
better to use the native RDFa syntax - the 'typeof' attribute - for
multiple types. Schema.org tools may have only weaker understanding of
extra types, in particular those defined externally.".

For previous discussion see the Wiki link. This also btw eliminates
one of the practical obstacles in the way of Good Relations
integration. We're not quite at the planned 1.0 release yet but we're
getting there! The additionalType property makes it possible for
Microdata-based publishers to list several relevant types, even when
the types are from diverse, independent schemas. This is important for
schema.org as it allows our markup to be mixed with other systems,
without making it too hard for consuming applications to interpret. A
description can use a schema.org type as a base, but mention others
(e.g. from DBpedia, Freebase, eventually Wikidata...) to improve the
specificity and detail of the description.

cheers,

Dan

Received on Wednesday, 18 July 2012 17:48:15 UTC