Re: 2014 Sports Proposal - V3

Hi Peter

A lot of interesting questions, not as academic as some would think :)
And not "corner cases", seems to me, Peter is just trying to figure out the
lines along which our concepts split the world.

Some thoughts (not addressing all Peter's questions, of course)

- The current model seems (for good reasons of mainstream usage) focused on
what makes certainly for 99% of online information about sports likely to
be marked with schema.org : popular sports competitions involving popular
teams, e.g., World Cup, Olympic Games, NBA, Tour de France etc. In that
sense, it's most of the time both athletic and competitive, often but not
always professional, but in all cases much structured in space and time by
organizations and events.

- The organizational aspect of sports is somehow orthogonal to competition.
Chess or Scrabble federations and competitions are organized basically
along the same model as soccer or basketball. Hence a model of teams and
competition should be independant of the level of physical engagement in
the activity. http://schema.org/PlayAction seems to be OK for all of those.

- OTOH some quite physical activities are (abusively maybe) called "sports"
even if they don't imply competition, such as training, fitness, yoga,
aikido ... and their organization may or may not be ruled by organizational
structures similar to sport federations, leagues etc. I practice and teach
aïkido in France in the framework of a national federation organized in
regional leagues composed of local clubs. There is no competition (aikido
spirit forbids it) but there are events such as training sessions under the
direction of (more or less famous) masters. And indeed, asking if aikido
clubs, leagues and events will be able to be use the sports schema can be a
good way to see where the line has been drawn.

If the model is able to keep orthogonal those different aspects ...
- organizational : clubs, teams, federations ...
- event : competitions, meetings, training sessions ...
- competition : results, records, decisions, ratings ...
- activity type : physical / athletic vs intellectual (chess) ...

... it will be able to capture not only the core 99%, but extend nicely to
"corner cases" :)

My 0.02 €

Best regards






2014-06-18 5:19 GMT+02:00 Peter F. Patel-Schneider <pfpschneider@gmail.com>:

> I was in the middle of thinking about sports when I saw your message, so I
> was very interested in seeing what proposals there are to handle sports.
> However, after reading your document I have many questions.
>
>
> Let's start with the definition of a sport.
>
> What makes a sport professional?  Is that there are professional
> competitions in it?  Then just about everything listed as olympic sports
> are
> professional, but the "(additive)" seems to indicate otherwise.
>
> Is a sport necessarily competitive?  Skiing is not necessarily competitive.
> Is recreational skiing a sport?  If not, you are using up a term for
> something that more naturally should be used for something else.
>
> Is a sport necessarily athletic?  Some non-athletic activites, e.g., chess,
> have governing bodies that belong to associations of sports governing
> bodies.
>
> What is a sport?  Is it a competitive activity that follows certain rules?
> This can't be, as just about every sport you list has variants that are
> played under different rules.  Is a sport something that has a governing
> body to codify several sets of rules?  This doesn't work either, as only a
> couple of the sports you list have particular governing bodies.  Is a sport
> something that people think of as a natural grouping?  This seems closer,
> but hockey doesn't fit here as ice hockey and field hockey are so very
> different.  Without some guidance as to what a sport is, how can there be
> any commonalities between what people use as sports?
>
> What makes something a team sport?  Only teams compete in Nascar, not
> individuals, for example.  Pairs tennis is competed by two players, which
> might be considered to be a team.  There are team competitions in tennis.
> Are olympic sports contested by teams or by individuals?
>
> You have several olympic sports.  However, half of these are not actually
> olympic sports according to Wikipedia.  Snowboarding is a discipline of
> skiing, swimming is a displine of aquatics, track isn't even a discpline.
>
>
>
> What makes a team a home team?  Is a home team the team that is most
> closely
> related to the venue?  What happens then when the New York Giants play the
> New York Jets?  Is instead a home team the team that is somehow designated
> by the rules of the competition as the home team?
>
> What is the decision for a tie?  What is the decision for a cricket draw?
>
> Some sports governing bodies, including cricket, provide for different
> kinds
> of status situations for events.  For example, baseball games can be in
> various states for quite some time, including suspended and protested, and
> can end up never being officially completed.
>
> Why is the range of sport Text?  This seems to invite abuse, with no way to
> recover.   Why not define a Class for sports, and let "things as strings"
> handle situations where text is used as a value?  The particular example of
> using a string that just happens to be the URL of a Wikipedia page only
> gets
> you the worst of both worlds.
>
> What is a coach?  Is a baseball (field) manager a coach?  Is a general
> manager a coach?  The answers here are fairly obvious, but it would be
> worthwhile, I think, to include some guidance.
>
>
> There are no separate classes for leagues or governing bodies, which are
> very important for almost all the sports you list, and are vitally
> important
> for the olympics.  There does not appear to be any way to discuss seasons
> or any other sort of multi-event competition except as sub-events, and
> Event
> is very poorly set up for anything besides a single-admission event.  There
> does not appear to be any way to connect an sports event to the sport being
> played or to the sanctioning body of the event.
>
>
> I think that these questions and concerns need to be addressed before the
> proposal can be considered to be mature.
>
>
> Peter F. Patel-Schneider
>
> On 06/16/2014 02:57 PM, Jason Johnson (BING) wrote:
>
>> All,
>>
>> I’m pleased to formally announce and encourage review and feedback on an
>> updated version of the 2014 Sports Vocabulary proposal that was originally
>> shared earlier this year
>> <http://blog.schema.org/2014/02/schemaorg-sports-vocabulary.html> in
>> January.
>> This is the third (and hopefully final) major update to the proposal since
>> then with major changes including:
>>
>> - overhaul of the statistics and event results vocabulary and data model
>>
>> - removal of the ‘Event Series’ vocabulary in favor of the more generic
>> Itemlist proposal
>>
>> - significant re-formatting to make the doc more readable
>>
>> - alignment with the new Role based vocabulary and data model
>>
>> A full list of changes can be found in the Change Log at the bottom of the
>> exported PDF <https://www.w3.org/wiki/File:2014SportsVocab-v3.pdf>.
>>
>> W3c Wiki Page: https://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/Sports
>>
>> Exported PDF: https://www.w3.org/wiki/File:2014SportsVocab-v3.pdf
>>
>> Below are links to some of the new terms within a test build of
>> Schema.org.
>>
>> http://sdo-sports.appspot.com/SportsOrganization
>> http://sdo-sports.appspot.com/Statistic
>> http://sdo-sports.appspot.com/SportsTeam
>> http://sdo-sports.appspot.com/Decision
>> http://sdo-sports.appspot.com/WinDecision
>> http://sdo-sports.appspot.com/LoseDecision
>> http://sdo-sports.appspot.com/SportsEvent
>> http://sdo-sports.appspot.com/CompetitionEvent
>> http://sdo-sports.appspot.com/Decision
>> http://sdo-sports.appspot.com/PlaceDecision
>> http://sdo-sports.appspot.com/DidNotFinishDecision
>> http://sdo-sports.appspot.com/EventCompleted
>>
>> REGARDING FEEDBACK:  Although this effort originated in the schema.org
>> sports
>> collaboration google group
>> <https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/sports-schema-collab>, in the
>> interests of consolidated feedback, I encourage everyone to simply use
>> this
>> W3c based public-vocabs mailing list.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> *Jason Johnson*
>>
>> Microsoft | Bing
>>
>>
>


-- 

*Bernard Vatant*
Vocabularies & Data Engineering
Tel :  + 33 (0)9 71 48 84 59
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