Re: Eurocentrism, incorrect unit abbreviations, and proprietary Royalist Engish (sic) terms

Hi all,

I'm a bit puzzled. In order:

David said:

China has metric, Imperial and Chinese units in widespread use.  Why is
> American Imperial more important than Chinese units?  The real question is:
> “Why doesn’t the US adopt the metric system?”


I never said that "American Imperial" units are more important than Chinese
units, or any other units. All I care about re: American units is that the
abbreviations are correct. American websites and publishers will use
American units. Chinese publishers will want to use metric and sometimes
traditional Chinese units (e.g. tael for precious metals weight)​. I assume
we'd want a Chinese version of Schema.org.

​Note also that Imperial units and American units are not the same.
Imperial is British. Wikipedia has a good article covering the differences:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_imperial_and_US_customary_measurement_systems
​

As for your question about America adopting the metric system, I don't have
a position on that either way, and it's pointless to argue about that here.

Martin said:

As for units of quantitative data, you can use any unit of measurement you
> want, as long as there is either a UN/CEFACT Common Code or a URI for it,
> or if you can establish a standard prefix plus unique identifiers for it.


This is what I'm concerned about. First, the units are already established
as are their abbreviations. We know that a kilogram is kg, a meter is m, a
millisecond is ms, etc. This is all established by the SI or the
International System of Units. SI trumps UN/CEFACT any day of the week. It
would incredibly unwise to deviate from SI standards for unit
symbols/abbreviations.

Note also that UN/CEFACT is a mostly European endeavor. Europe is more
bureaucratic than the US, and CEFACT was an effort to have a centralized...
*specification* I guess we'd call it, for business processes and trade. For
example, they have more than a hundred heavy XML schemas like these:

   - Lodging House Information Request
   - Lodging House Information Response
   - Lodging House Reservation Request
   - Lodging House Reservation Response
   - Lodging House Travel Product Information



​…with the​ idea that all "lodging houses" would use these XML schemas,
across countries and countless other contexts. This kind of thing would
never occur to Americans as something we need to do – centrally planning
the transaction structure and data transmission for random industries
(especially in XML). For another example, see ISO 20222, which desperately
needs to be reformulated in YAML.

​But my main point is: please don't​ use non-standard unit abbreviations.
There's no reason for Schema.org to do that. And for American units,
Wikipedia is a good source for the references:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units. NIST and ANSI
will be the sources for some of them, but there are no surprises here.
American units and their abbreviations haven't changed in decades. (The
definition of a yard and pound, and by extension related units, was
established by the International Agreement on the Yard and Pound in the
1950s, which gave them exact metric definitions/conversion factors.)

Martin's also talking about AK-47s, the NRA, PETA, etc. I don't know where
all that came from. I feel like I missed an e-mail in the thread. If it's
about flexibility, that's great, but it doesn't address my concerns about
the Eurocentrism of the schema, or the Royalist English. (FYI, campsite is
the American term for a "camping pitch") If you confuse American publishers
with a bunch of Royalist English, non-standard unit abbreviations, etc.
they'll be less likely to embrace Schema.org (beyond just having page-level
metadata in a JSON-LD script in the head).

Thad, thanks. I'll put some concise issues on GitHub.

Cheers,

JD​



On Wed, Jul 4, 2018 at 2:59 PM David Gibson <
David.Gibson@southerncross.co.nz> wrote:

> India is now the second largest English speaking country with about
> 125million English speakers projected to quadruple in the next 10 years.
> (BTW India also went metric in 1956)
>
>
>
> https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20500312
>
>
>
> The Commonwealth is generally both “Royalist English” and metric.
>
>
>
> China has metric, Imperial and Chinese units in widespread use.  Why is
> American Imperial more important than Chinese units?  The real question is:
> “Why doesn’t the US adopt the metric system?”
>
>
>
> http://www.us-metric.org/metric-signs-on-roads-in-the-u-s/
>
>
>
> I could make a number of finer points about constitutional monarchy, the
> Bill of Rights, the Act of Settlement and the Magna Carta that may colour
> your definition of “Royalist” offensive, in some circles … but this is
> neither the place nor the time.
>
>
>
> /DavidG
>
>
>
> *From:* Joe Duarte [mailto:songofapollo@gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Wednesday, 4 July 2018 7:54 p.m.
> *To:* schema.org Mailing List <public-schemaorg@w3.org>
> *Subject:* Eurocentrism, incorrect unit abbreviations, and proprietary
> Royalist Engish terms
>
>
>
> Hi all,
>
>
>
> I have a few threads of feedback:
>
>
>
> 1. The schema is littered with incorrect abbreviations of American units.
> Examples:
>
>    - In the Vehicle schema
>    <https://apac01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fschema.org%2FVehicle&data=02%7C01%7Cdavid.gibson%40southerncross.co.nz%7C16afd429124e4951b64708d5e183ab3a%7Ca97525bd1b704278b9c60e9ba38a6add%7C1%7C0%7C636662878004681395&sdata=VHdojKS5oMmWy20hxFtHKPNkZckmAUqxYGokWRVcJn4%3D&reserved=0>,
>    for cargoVolume, it gives FTQ as the abbreviation for cubic feet.
>
>
>    - For fuelCapacity, it gives GLL for gallons.
>
> I couldn't find any reference on the web that gave these abbreviations, so
> I'm stumped where they came from. Cubic feet can just be written as cubic
> feet, or cubic ft., or ft³.
>
>
>
> And gallon is abbreviated gal.
>
>
>
> For fuelConsumption, the schema doesn't even try to account for the US,
> and only refers to a European measure (liters per 100 km). (The US measure
> is miles per gallon, abbreviated as MPG.)
>
>
>
> 2. Which leads to a related observation. The schema is vividly
> Eurocentric, in that it seems designed around European norms rather than
> American ones. This is odd, since Schema.org sponsored mostly by American
> search companies, and there are 325 million people in the US vs. 65 million
> in Britain, for example.
>
>
>
> Since the schema is in the English language, and the user base will be
> overwhelmingly American, I think it's more appropriate that we use American
> English by default, unless there's a contextual reason to use Royalist
> English. Here are some examples:
>
>
>
> CampingPitch
> <https://apac01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fschema.org%2FCampingPitch&data=02%7C01%7Cdavid.gibson%40southerncross.co.nz%7C16afd429124e4951b64708d5e183ab3a%7Ca97525bd1b704278b9c60e9ba38a6add%7C1%7C0%7C636662878004681395&sdata=0ynzYCpuigUKjTywhgp%2FeyqgMKEW60q28nKA%2F6a6W88%3D&reserved=0>
> is not a term Americans will be familiar with. It's a Royalist* term.
>
>
>
> Under Car, there are but two properties (from Car). I would expect these
> to be important, fundamental properties at the right level of ontological
> abstraction, but rather they are:
>
>
>
> acrissCode – this is a coding system used by European car rental
> businesses. The description is so deeply Eurocentric that it doesn't even
> mention Europe, or the fact these codes are only used in Europe. It's as if
> the rest of the world doesn't exist. Any codes that are only used in
> certain countries or continents should be identified as so encumbered.
>
>
>
> roofLoad – this is the second of the two core properties from Car. And
> again it has unit errors, this time across the board. It claims that a
> kilogram is abbreviated KGM, and pounds as LBR. The SI abbreviation for
> kilogram is kg, and for American customary units, pounds are lbs. This can
> be confirmed in any appropriate reference, including Wikipedia.
>
>
>
> Note also that roofLoad is likely to be a European concern – Americans
> don't talk about it, and it's never advertised by carmakers here. In any
> case, we have properties for Car, and they are a European rental coding
> system and roofLoad. The Car schema is in pretty bad shape.
>
>
>
> There are a lot more errors in the Schema, including repetitions of the
> bizarre, incorrect unit abbreviations.
>
>
>
> 3. The English-only instantiation of Schema.org also raises some important
> long-term questions. Do you plan to expand or mirror Schema.org into other
> major languages (French, Spanish, German, Russian, Simplified Chinese,
> Japanese, Korean, etc.)? Or is it meant to be mostly Western focused? That
> still implicates some European languages. Moreover, if we create Schema.org
> for country-specific languages like French and German, we'll need to be
> sure to avoid the mistakes in the current schema, and have the French
> version littered with British assumptions, for example.
>
>
>
> In summary, I think there are lots of problems with the schema right now,
> from bizarrely incorrect units, sections that do not contemplate the
> existence of the United States, and messy structures and hierarchies that
> do not meet normal ontological – or just logical – standards.
>
>
>
> Is the team too small? Is it perhaps based in Europe? I'm happy to help.
> I'm working on a metadata schema for scientific research right now, and a
> couple of other schemas that I might propose for inclusion in Schema.org.
> In any case, I'm happy to help. I can look for pull request opportunities,
> and you might want to just hire me – I'm a social scientist who specializes intellectual
> and cultural diversity
> <https://apac01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.cambridge.org%2Fimages%2FfileUpload%2Fdocuments%2FDuarte-Haidt_BBS-D-14-00108_preprint.pdf&data=02%7C01%7Cdavid.gibson%40southerncross.co.nz%7C16afd429124e4951b64708d5e183ab3a%7Ca97525bd1b704278b9c60e9ba38a6add%7C1%7C1%7C636662878004691400&sdata=FXCZAlGHl1qN75lRD%2BKcuzbpK5EIBYv%2B09g%2B%2FLoV2eI%3D&reserved=0>
> and how it helps science and teams. It would probably help to have someone
> on the team who knows mainstream American norms, with a rural background,
> who isn't white, who loves and knows cars very well, as well as ontology in
> general. Schema.org won't reach its full potential if it's run by a handful
> of urbanites in the Bay Area, Europe, etc. There would be too much cultural
> sameness and bias, and giving semantics to the web is a job for a
> culturally diverse team.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
>
> Joe Duarte, PhD
>
> Phoenix, AZ, USA
>
>
>
> * By Royalist English, I mean that which is spoken in countries where they
> bend the knee to the underemployed fashion models of the House of Windsor.
>
>
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