Re: Need for W3C 'living' vocabulary & possibility of forking schema.org?

Hi Karen,

On 04/28/2015 06:55 PM, Karen Coyle wrote:
> To me, the big question is: is there anything in schema.org that is
> unique, that is not covered by any other vocabulary? I ask this because
> it seems to me that schema.org is a convenient aggregation of terms
> under a single namespace, but does not introduce anything new. If there
> were not the requirement that schema.org be in a single namespace, would
> it even need to exist?
Personally I find 'single namespace' not a real requirement, it may
matter more for those who care about Microdata but personally I wouldn't
give it much of an importance.

What I do see much more important - *consistent documentation* including
clear examples and diagrams / visualizations to accompany multiple
serializations (JSON-LD, RDFa, Turtle etc.) I started *experimenting*
with visualizing various things in this very early repository. Thinking
how to use already existing URIs
* https://github.com/w3c-social/social-vocab
I hope to add sometimes soon details of how various API calls modify
state of the data / graph.
Graph diagrams for now use simple bitmaps exported from Google Drawings
but ASAP I hope to move to something in direction of
http://vowl.visualdataweb.org/webvowl/index.html
Last but not least, all examples should eventually have links to JSON-LD
Playground http://json-ld.org/playground/ (which hopefully will
align/merge at some point with RDFa Playground http://rdfa.info/play/ )

Early work on extracting vocab requirements from User Stories identified
in Social WG & IG stays available at
*
https://www.w3.org/wiki/Socialig/Vocabulary_TF/Mapping_API_User_Stories_to_Vocabulary_terms
I started including there existing terms from schema.org,
microformats.org, activity streams 2.0 draft and also also try to search
lov.okfn.org for relevant terms from SIOC, FOAF, CCO etc.

While we can evaluate current state of web vocabularies from perspective
of machine readability. We can't forget that *people* need to implement
all that stuff and most developers need clear, consistent and well
organized documentation!

NOTE: this reply doesn't even get into dilemma of which terms from ocean
of vocabs aggregated in http://lov.okfn.org can on can not appear in
normative parts of specs created in W3C groups!

Cheers!


> 
> kc
> 
> On 4/28/15 9:11 AM, ☮ elf Pavlik ☮ wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Next week Social WG will gather in Paris for 3rd face to face
>> meeting[1]. I proposed for the agenda topic of maintaining a 'living'
>> vocabulary, already placing myself an image of xkcd:Standards (927)[2]
>> next to it.
>>
>> I already made multiple attempts to clarify situation of depending on
>> schema.org in W3C specs. To my understanding, as for today situation
>> looks as follows:
>>   - W3C does NOT approve dependency on schema.org
>>   + W3C does approve dependency on microformats.org
>>
>> While, I find big appreciation to both efforts and reference both in
>> related Social WG/IG issues. Microformats makes impression of hostile to
>> RDF[3], but at the same time many people considers it more 'open' than
>> schema.org. I must admit not really understanding myself W3C position on
>> allowing dependency on microformats.org and NOT allowing dependency on
>> schema.org
>>
>> While W3C hosts in it's namespace multiple 'static' vocabularies. As of
>> today it doesn't seem to maintain a 'living' vocabulary. Which continues
>> to evolve in a way similar to schema.org or microformats.org
>>
>> As more and more W3C groups start using Linked Data and need to
>> recommend use of shared vocabularies. Existence of something similar to
>> schema.org might come beneficial for all those groups. Once again
>> assuming here that direct use of schema.org will never become an option
>> for W3C specs. At the same time I already notice use of schema.org terms
>> in not normative way in various drafts, especially in CGs.
>>
>> By writing this email, I hope to present current state of things, at
>> least as far as I understand them. And invite community to share ideas
>> about need for such shared 'living' vocabulary which W3C will approve
>> for normative dependencies.
>>
>> 1) What do you think about forking schema.org under W3C namespace,
>> making small adjustments but keeping it as much as possible compatible
>> with evolving schema.org, and later possibly merging them again?
>> 2) What do you think about creating such 'living' vocabulary from
>> scratch and making sure to incorporate experience from schema.org and
>> microformats.org communities?
>> 3) What do you think about creating tools and educational resources,
>> which would lower current barriers in using even minimal RDF reasoning
>> e.g. RDFa Vocabulary Entailment[4] and hope that people will use it to
>> deal with mapping between terms in various existing Semantic Web
>> vocabs?[5]
>> 4) Do you see any other way, than creating such 'living' vocabulary
>> which provides an alternative to W3C publishing another 'static' and
>> duplicating many concepts already existing in schema.org and
>> microformats into Activity Streams 2.0 Vocabulary[6]?
>>
>> Constructive feedback much appreciated!
>>
>> [1] https://www.w3.org/wiki/Socialwg/2015-05-04
>> [2] https://xkcd.com/927/
>> [3] http://microformats.org/wiki/triples
>> [4] http://www.w3.org/TR/rdfa-syntax/#s_vocab_entailment
>> [5] http://lov.okfn.org/
>> [6] http://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/
>>
>>
> 

Received on Thursday, 30 April 2015 10:43:49 UTC