ACTION-149 - back references

Hi Dan,

This e-mail is triggered specifically by an action item I have within 
GLD. I know we've discussed this before and you've taken some actions in 
a specific case but I'd like to generalise if possible.

To what extent, if any, is schema.org willing to include 
owl:equivalentClass/Property statements in the markup to point back to a 
term originally in another vocab (Good Relations, DCAT etc).

Take schema:Dataset. At the bottom of http://schema.org/Dataset it says 
"This class is based upon W3C DCAT work, and benefits from collaboration 
around the DCAT, ADMS and VoID vocabularies. See 
http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/Datasets for full details and 
mappings." which is useful human info but isn't as precise as

schema:Dataset owl:equivalentClass dcat:Dataset

which is not present in the RDFa.

Where such equivalences exist (and that won't be everywhere of course) 
would the schema.org partners be willing to make such machine readable 
statements?

Is there a policy? If not, do you think one might usefully be 
formulated? I would argue that including such triples would:

- make schema.org less open to criticisms of its not-quite open process 
(I have been asked why W3C is so supportive of schema.org whilst its 
process is not fully open. I'm happy to answer that positively but it 
remains an issue for some);

- give more weight to the more domain-specific terms since they will be 
seen to have come from a community within that domain;

- make it easy to answer the question "which should I use, 
schema:dataset or dcat:Dataset" since the answer would be "either, 
they're the same;"

- give credit where it's due.

WDYT?

Phil.

-- 


Phil Archer
W3C Data Activity Lead
http://www.w3.org/2013/data/

http://philarcher.org
+44 (0)7887 767755
@philarcher1

Received on Wednesday, 11 December 2013 11:54:43 UTC