Tightening up Re: schema.org/Place: replace faxNumber and telephone with contactPoint

(We've got a bit away from Max's actual issue here. Rebranding the thread  
a bit).

On Tue, 04 Jun 2013 01:08:30 +0500, Thad Guidry <thadguidry@gmail.com>  
wrote:

> We should have the description of http://schema.org/LocalBusiness be more
> filtered and fine tuned to what it really is representing.  The current
> description does not capture the reality as well as it should.

Yes...

> If we say that a LocalBusiness must have a few minimums to be typed as a
> LocalBusiness, such as mailing address at a minimum, than put that into  
> the description.  Or a telephone number additionally, if that is also a  
> minimum requirement.

No, a phone number is not a requirement. In principle a mailing address  
might be, but that starts to pin down the nature of the business.

Although one of the businesses I rely on is a truck that appears in my  
village on mondays and sells fruit, and a small car that appears six days  
a week and sells bread.

> I would rather see better descriptions in Schema.org that help frame up  
> the realities of the Schema Types that we are trying to preserve based  
> on those minimum Schema properties that signify that particular Type.
>
> Does that make sense Dan ?  Some descriptions we probably want to keep as
> is and more open to interpretation, I know..., but others we really  
> should reel in a bit more in my opinion.

We're at something of a crossroads. We can either let things grow  
organically, or we can try to shake up the vocabulary to get a bit more  
structure.

The first approach leads to such unexpected results as saying "the  
courthouse is a local business", which people might think is unintended  
humour - or worse, might actively use as intentional humour.

The second requires us to do a lot of hard thinking about things we  
describe, and learn more about what charateristics they really have. If  
the goal is to create a lot of work in the short term, this is definitely  
the answer - but it is not as clear which approach (or blend of the two)  
is likely to be more successful. In part that hinges on our strategy for  
versioning.

Questions like "why can't I describe the different kinds of phone  
number"?, or "should telephone numbers actually conform to the tel: URL  
scheme so they can be used?" motivate thinking about this kind of  
meta-problem.

cheers

Chaals

> On Mon, Jun 3, 2013 at 9:55 AM, Dan Brickley <danbri@danbri.org> wrote:
>
>> +Cc: Guha
>>
>> On 3 June 2013 07:04, Max Froumentin
>> <Max.Froumentin@digital.justice.gov.uk> wrote:
>> > Hi Matthias,
>> >
>> > Thanks for your response.  The fact that "telephone" and "faxNumber"  
>> are
>> text makes contactPoint seem not so useful:
>> >
>> > writing:
>> > <div itemprop="ContactPoint">
>> (I think you mean @itemtype here?)
>> > <div itemprop="contactType">Switchboard</div>
>> > <div itemprop="telephone">02 42 68 53 00</div>
>> > </div>
>> >
>> > is pretty much the same as
>> >
>> > <div itemprop="telephone">Switchboard: 02 42 68 53 00 </div>
>> >
>> > no?
>>
>> (so the issue is that you want to use the contact-oriented properties
>> from Organization but Courthouse is only a subtype of Place, not of
>> Organization. Organization has some but not all of the contact
>> properties, and lacks 'contactPoint').
>>
>> The core issue is that some but not "Place" entities are
>> "Organizations". Currently in schema.org this is handled as follows:
>>
>> http://schema.org/Organization and http://schema.org/Place both have
>> several subtypes, but only one subtype (LocalBusiness) takes both of
>> these as supertypes,ie. says "anything that is a LocalBusiness will
>> always be both a Place and an Organization". This allows possibility
>> that sometimes other entities fall under both types, though.
>>
>> * Place subtypes: AdministrativeArea CivicStructure Landform
>> LandmarksOrHistoricalBuildings LocalBusiness Residence
>> TouristAttraction
>> * Organization subtypes: Corporation EducationalOrganization
>> GovernmentOrganization LocalBusiness NGO PerformingGroup SportsTeam
>>
>> The only type inheriting from both is "LocalBusiness". I can see why
>> you might not want to present a Courthouse as a LocalBusiness if you
>> read "local business" in narrow terms. However we do have
>> http://schema.org/GovernmentOffice (containing PostOffice), also
>> http://schema.org/Library under LocalBusiness. LocalBusiness means
>> more than 'Shop'.
>>
>> BTW the fact that we have contact info attached to Place is also
>> sometimes awkward. Our microformats friends found it funny that a
>> Volcano might have a faxNumber; and more recently I noticed that a
>> Country (also a 'Place') can have 'opening hours'.
>>
>> My advice would be to publish in RDFa and mix-in both types at the
>> instance level when it makes sense, rather have schema.org itself say
>> for each type which one will also always be a place. We don't say
>> anything that stops something being both a Courthouse and a
>> GovernmentBuilding, for example. (in fact I think Microdata is fine
>> with multiple types too, so long as they come from the same
>> vocabulary, which they do in this case).
>>
>> While we could tweak the type hierarchy and add more Place subtypes
>> under Organization (or LocalBusiness) that seems an endless task.
>>
>> We should probably add contactPoint into Place. (e.g. A Volcano having
>> a contactPoint seems better than it having a faxNumber...).
>>
>> Does that help?
>>
>> Dan
>>
>> >>> One could claim that a phone number belongs to an organisation and  
>> not
>> a place, but:
>> >>> - the "telephone" and "faxNumber" properties are already on Place,  
>> as
>> text.
>> >>> - my use-case is court houses, which I annotate as Courthouse, which
>> descends from Place, not Organization.
>>
>>
>
>


-- 
Charles McCathie Nevile - Consultant (web standards) CTO Office, Yandex
       chaals@yandex-team.ru         Find more at http://yandex.com

Received on Monday, 3 June 2013 23:49:02 UTC