Re: Action: agent vs participant vs object

On Tue, Oct 21, 2014 at 4:57 PM, ☮ elf Pavlik ☮ <
perpetual-tripper@wwelves.org> wrote:

> On 10/22/2014 12:18 AM, Sam Goto wrote:
> >
> >
> > On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 4:48 PM, ☮ elf Pavlik ☮
> > <perpetual-tripper@wwelves.org <mailto:perpetual-tripper@wwelves.org>>
> > wrote:
> >
> >     Hi,
> >
> >     I keep reviewing examples of Action subtypes, IMO some of them use
> >     agent, participant and object in possibly deceiving way.
> >
> >
> > That's probably my fault :( Sorry :( I'd be happy to clarify where
> needed.
> No worries + my apologies for using possible bit to strong term! I
> shouldn't go through those examples late at night ;)
>
>
> >
> >
> >     According to
> >     definitions:
> >
> >     * agent - The direct performer or driver of the action (animate or
> >     inanimate). e.g. *John* wrote a book.
> >     * particpant - Other co-agents that participated in the action
> >     indirectly. e.g. John wrote a book with *Steve*.
> >     * object - The object upon the action is carried out, whose state is
> >     kept intact or changed. Also known as the semantic roles patient,
> >     affected or undergoer (which change their state) or theme (which
> >     doesn't). e.g. John read *a book*.
> >
> >
> >     I consider description of participant already including ambiguous
> >     example. If John and Steve wrote book together I would see both of
> them
> >     as agent in this action.
> >
> >
> > The original attempt for "participant" were for completed actions of the
> > style "X person did Y WITH Z", in that Z in "WITH Z" is the
> > "participant" (think facebook posts).
> Yes, that makes a lot of sense to me!
>
> >
> > If John and Steve wrote the book, I think you'd be correct to say that
> > both are agents. I think calling one an agent (primary) and the second a
> > participant (secondary) is also semantically valid and correct.
> Agreed! I think one could consider all the agents and in some cases
> objects as participants of given action. I also noticed many useful sub
> properties in: http://schema.org/participant
>
> I don't think that in many cases we can draw a clear line between
> agent/participant/(object sometimes), but I would like to avoid someone
> getting impression: "only one agent allowed" or "only one object allowed"
>
> >
> > Another way to approach this is to have an "author" property that is a
> > sub-property-of agent, to specialize the role.
> Somehow I would try to keep distinction between Action and publishing
> online update/status/note about this Action/Activity. For example:
>
> * John and Steve agreed with a scholar paper claiming that P = NP!.
>
> Such activity could get originally published by some organization, where
> both John and Steve participate in, and then both of them and anyone
> else could re-publish it in their social streams.
>
> >
> > So, I think "consumers" of these frames (e.g. google) should be able to
> > consume all of these combinations and understand the intent of the
> > "producer" in the variety of ways that this can be expressed.
> Can I somehow preview all the current examples of actions in some
> existing rich snippets view?
>
>
> >
> >
> >     More examples follows
> >
> >     * John and Steve agreed with a scholar paper claiming that P = NP!.
> >     * John and Steve disagreed with a scholar paper claiming that P =
> NP!,
> >     resulting in another scholar paper claiming that P is in fact !=
> >        NP!.
> >     * John and Steve dislike an article.
> >     * John and Steve like an article.
> >     * John and Steve want an ipod.
> >     * John and Steve reviewed an article.
> >     * John travel from the US to Brazil with Steve.
> >     * John planned an exercise plan with Steve.
> >     * John ran 100 miles with Steve.
> >
> >     All of those examples use agent: John, participant: Steve
> >
> >     I think at least in some if not most of cases above *both* John and
> >     Steve could act as agent!
> >
> >
> > In a social stream, you'd occasionally want a main character associated
> > with the stream (e.g. John ran 100 miles, where John is the main
> > character. Steve was accompanying him, but that's secondary.).
> Similar thoughts arise as with my comment on P = NP! example. If 3
> distinct parties want to publish or re-publish this action (John, Steve,
> [ a SportsTeam]). Same action in 3 different social streams may put
> emphasis on different agents/participants, not sure about making a copy
> of such action, minting URI for it and swapping agent/participant for
> each stream...
>
>
> >
> >
> >     We could at least provide some examples with
> >     multiple agents and multiple objects. Otherwise one can get
> impression
> >     that agent has cardinality equal to one. For multiple agents we can
> just
> >     convert some of examples from list above.
> >
> >
> > Yep, I agree.
> >
> > Can you come up with a few examples where you have a clear distinction
> > between primary agents and mere participants?
> How about in examples "John and Steve ... " we'll make them both agents
> while in "John ..., with Steve" we'll make Steve a participant?
>
> >
> >
> >
> >     For multiple objects I could write an example like:
> >     * John took photo of Jane, Steve and Alice
> >
> >
> > You mentioned there was confusion between "objects" too. Can you give me
> > more examples of where that appears?
> My apologies again, I most likely overstated this one as well :(
> Currently we have only one example with multiple values for object in
> http://schema.org/SelectAction I'll try to come up with few more!
>
>
> >
> >
> >
> >     Does it sound reasonable?
> >
> >
> > It does. Thanks for pointing it out, I agree that this isn't clear at
> > the moment and more examples would help.
> I'll try coming up with additional ones whenever I'll think it may help
> with clarify something. I also added few more checklist items, mostly
> about improving examples, to https://github.com/danbri/schemaorg/pull/15


Neat, thanks! I made a few comments on this pull request.

@danbri, can we get this pull request merged after elf addresses my
comments? it cleans up a lot of the examples in a constructive manner.


>
> I plan to move most of them to separate PR to keep things more focused
> and manageable to merge. Do you use github by any chance?
>
> Cheers!
>
>