Re: Ease of adoption

On Jul 29, 2013 3:53 AM, "Dave Pawson" <dave.pawson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Reading http://schema.org/docs/gs.html (IMHO) I don't see the salesmans
version,
> a trainers view of the ideas behind schema.org.
>
> Has anyone started to think of how a web monkey or home user might be
persuaded
> to adopt microdata for their own usage?  E.g. taking the user perspective?
> Dan and others may well find their way round schema.org, but it isn't so
easy
> to get started when a new user comes across it?

When you say "taking the user perspective", what exactly do you mean by
that? How are you suggesting the pitch should be modified in order to reach
the target audience?

schema.org has a fairly great description:

"""
What is Schema.org?
This site provides a collection of schemas, i.e., html tags, that
webmasters can use to markup their pages in ways recognized by major search
providers. Search engines including Bing, Google, Yahoo! and Yandex rely on
this markup to improve the display of search results, making it easier for
people to find the right web pages.
Many sites are generated from structured data, which is often stored in
databases. When this data is formatted into HTML, it becomes very difficult
to recover the original structured data. Many applications, especially
search engines, can benefit greatly from direct access to this structured
data. On-page markup enables search engines to understand the information
on web pages and provide richer search results in order to make it easier
for users to find relevant information on the web. Markup can also enable
new tools and applications that make use of the structure.
A shared markup vocabulary makes it easier for webmasters to decide on a
markup schema and get the maximum benefit for their efforts. So, in the
spirit of sitemaps.org, search engines have come together to provide a
shared collection of schemas that webmasters can use.
"""

schema.org/docs/gs.html has the following heading structure:

Getting started with schema.org
* How to mark up your content using Microdata
   * Why use Microdata? [what about RDFa, these days]
* Using the schema.org vocabulary
* Advanced-topic: machine-understandable versions of information

> The other side of this is the breadth of options? How might the
> increasingly large
> number of terms be 'filtered' for use by  the man in the street to
> optimise his/her
> chances of a search engine result?
>
> I think this aspect could and should be given consideration as the size of
> the main term set increases.
>
> Just a thought. Is there work being done in this area?

There is a fair amount of research regarding meta tag stuffing in regards
to SEO.

>
> regards
>
> --
> Dave Pawson
> XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
> Docbook FAQ.
> http://www.dpawson.co.uk
>

IMHO, from an en-US perspective, the copy text for the schema.org Ontology:

* is fairly verbose
* could have a few more bullet points
* could be updated to reference the supported formats
  (RDF/XML, Turtle, JSON-LD, N3, NTriples, HTML5 Microdata, and *RDFa*)
* could more directly allude to schema.rdfs.org and
http://schema.rdfs.org/tools.html
* could link to topical Wikipedia pages

Wikipedia pages

* /Linked_data
* /Semantic_web
* /Microdata_(HTML)

I collected a number of Wikipedia links that may be useful for, as you put
it, teh "web monkey and home user" here:
http://www.reddit.com/r/semanticweb/comments/1dvakc/schemaorgdataset_standard_schema_for_linked_data/

Please feel free to share and incorporate this research.