Re: SchemaBibEx and bib.schema.org

Great to see us all diving in and discussing the name ;-)

As Tim implies most names have baggage or potential conflicts with other domains.  So bibex.schema.org<http://bibex.schema.org> has some appeal - except for this perhaps: http://www.dama.upc.edu/technology-transfer/bibex  ‘bib.schema.org<http://bib.schema.org>’ came from the proposal itself, and I have often heard us referred to as the folks in the bib community.  Whatever, no need to make a decision just yet.


As to Antoine’s question about sustainability, there are a couple of angles to this.

Firstly there is an obvious concern from those behind schema.org<http://schema.org> that extensions will be sustained.  From what I understand, the expectation will be that the definition of an extension will be held in a simple file that is publicly visible, say in Github, so that it can be pulled into the documentation when required as *.schema.org<http://schema.org> URIs are resolved.

Then there is the concern about the sustainability of schema.org<http://schema.org> itself.  Yes in theory, the search engines could shut up shop and go home tomorrow, however the adoption is so wide already that they would find it difficult to do that.  Whatever eventually comes after schema.org<http://schema.org> I suspect would need to provide an upgrade path from schema.org<http://schema.org> to be successful, and even then I would expect the need to preserve at least a frozen version of Schema.org<http://Schema.org> would need be addressed before they moved on.

All this being speculation of course, but my pragmatic view is fairly optimistic.


~Richard

On 11 Mar 2015, at 15:23, Antoine Isaac <aisaac@few.vu.nl<mailto:aisaac@few.vu.nl>> wrote:

OK, Jeff!
Then I should perhaps have attached my comment somewhere else. But I don't want to remove it :)

Antoine

On 3/11/15 2:56 PM, Young,Jeff (OR) wrote:
Antoine,

My comment about purl.org<http://purl.org> was only to point out that *.schema.org<http://schema.org> would be another potential recipe for people to consider:

http://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-vocab-pub/#purls

Jeff

-----Original Message-----
From: Antoine Isaac [mailto:aisaac@few.vu.nl]
Sent: Wednesday, March 11, 2015 5:10 AM
To: public-schemabibex@w3.org
Subject: Re: SchemaBibEx and bib.schema.org

Hi everyone,

I think this is an interesting proposal, and approves that this group would be
an ideal forum to devise such an extension.

What I'm slightly worried about is the persistence of schema.org extensions,
if the community starts using them a lot.

Jeff mentioned about purl.org in the proposal
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-
hq53ZtP1NxRqpjCCuhVRRwqQmEuaAzWDQ7OuG18_pg/
I'm not sure schema.org extensions are better in every point to purl.org.
Say, if OCLC shuts down purl.org and wishes to hand it over to someone else,
there might be a consensus (and a consortium) in the community to jump in
and maintain it.
If schema.org is shut down by Google et al, doing this would be more
difficult, given the variety of people and orgs involved in the extensions.

I don't foresee shutting down schema.org as a problem per se. It is meant for
specific purposes, and if Google/Yahoo/Yandex think it's not working, so be
it: they are the core stakeholders, and I'm ok with such natural selection for
vocabularies.

But the library community may start to rely on the schema.org extension for
"deeper" data exchange scenarios, beyond schema.org's orginal case of web
page mark-up. Some discussions and papers I've seen in the past couple of
months hint a bit at this. This could be an awkward dependency.

Best,

Antoine

On 3/9/15 5:16 PM, Wallis,Richard wrote:
Hi All,

Last month I copied the SchemaBibEx list with the proposal
<https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-vocabs/2015Feb/0052.html>
from Guha, on the public-vocabs list, for an extension mechanism for the
Schema.org <http://Schema.org> vocabulary.

As I said at the time, I welcome this proposal which will enable the broad
extension of Schema.org <http://Schema.org> to satisfy many needs of
individual sectors without loosing the essential generic cross sector nature of
Schema itself.  I also have some confidence in the approach proposed as it
has been used in a very similar way to produce the BiblioGraph.net
<http://BiblioGraph.net> extension vocabulary that was referred to in the
proposal.

In simple terms, my understanding of how this would operate is thus:

  * A group of individuals from an interested domain or sector would take
on the role of discussing and deciding what extension types and properties
could usefully be added to a [their] domain specific extension to schema.org
<http://schema.org>.
      o The domain group would manage their own publicly visible view of
what is current and proposed for their extensions - in Github for example.
      o The domain group would propose their initial, then later updates,
extension to the core Schema.org <http://Schema.org> group.

  * The core group upon receiving extension proposals would discuss and
recommend, only from the point of view of compatibility with the overall
vocabulary (Type & Property name conflicts etc.).
      o In effect they will be validating on syntax, not the semantics of and
areas covered by the extensions.
      o When accepted the schema.org <http://schema.org> site would be
configured to include the latest version of the extension and its associated
examples.


I am suggesting that the SchemaBibEx Group, or a subset of it, is the ideal
group to act as the Domain Group for the broad bibliographic domain -
bib.schema.org <http://bib.schema.org>.

What are people's thoughts on this - the extension proposal itself,
bib.schema.org <http://bib.schema.org>, the potential for our group to
participate as a domain group?

Currently Guha's proposal is just a proposal, but I know there is discussion
and efforts going into establishing it as a way forward.  Being able to offer
support and intention to offer up one of the first extensions I believe would
be good for Schema.org <http://Schema.org> and the broad description of
bibliographic data on the web.

On a practical note, Guha's proposal used the small BibloGraph.net
<http://bibliograph.net/> extension vocabulary as an example to model
things on.  As editor of BiblioGraph.net <http://BiblioGraph.net> I see no
problem with the terms within that vocabulary acting a seed for a
bib.schema.org <http://bib.schema.org> extension which would eventually
replace the current need for it.


~Richard