Pluralize plurals

Hi.


As Markus explains in https://twitter.com/MarkusLanthaler/status/642229032650698752, some plural properties (having a JSON array data type) in Hydra are named in singular form (“operation” instead of “operations”, for instance) so they can be more easily mapped to Schema.org.


I’d like to suggest that this decision is wrong for two reasons. First, it makes the JSON harder to interpret and understand for anyone unfamiliar with Hydra. Not a very important point, but still valid and something that should be considered.


Second, and more important, I think that for properties that are of the type JSON array, the ontological meaning of the property is infact not its Schema.org definition. It is the items within the array that have this meaning and semantics; the property and its array is just a container of such items and does not bear the same meaning as the items themselves.


Had JSON and/or JavaScript supported it, those array properties could have extended properties bearing their own semantics. In XML, this is very easy to express through attributes, for instance (see the `extends` property):


<operations extends=“http://example.com/schema#BasicOperations">
   <operation>…</operation>
</operations>


Although we’re not trying to be XML compatible in any way here, I think this illustrates a point that I think might be a design error. And if it’s not, I still think the first point about intuitiveness in the format is important enough to warrant us to do something about it.


Thoughts?