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

Hi all,

I stood down when Thad said the issue didn't matter and asked me to move
on, but I guess now we're talking about broader issues.

I missed the first person who said they were offended by my use of Royalist
English, but I now see two people. I'll stop using the term since it
appears to be inflammatory. There was rationale for its use – Royalist
English as I use it is not synonymous with British English, and I didn't
make that clear. I meant the realm's English, basically the Five Eyes
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes> minus the US: the UK, Canada,
Australia, and New Zealand combined. Sometimes Canadian, Australian, or
Kiwi English matches American English, but they're closer to British
English overall. Their common denominator for me was that they were part of the
realm <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_realm>. I wanted to
determine their total population compared to the US in order to determine
which terms we should prefer.

I initially forgot about Ireland. The combined population of Britain,
Ireland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand is 138 million (rounding to the
nearest million in every case). The population of the United States is 326
million. So it seems trivially apparent that we should prefer American
English if we're having only one schema using English only. (I don't know
whether we should count India's English speakers, since I think in most
cases Hindi or another language will be their primary language, but Michael
Andrews informed us that they use the term campsite anyway, like the US.) I
guess I'll just use the term British English or Commonwealth English
henceforth.

I'm still not clear on why Schema.org is English-only, and why it can't
have region-specific terms. What are the French, Germans, or Mexicans
supposed to do with it in 2018? Shouldn't we have all the major languages
covered?

Schema.org is designed to be consumed by search engines/bots, and it is
also designed to be generated and edited by humans. One optimization that
I'd like to see is that there be a human-targeted syntax for applying
Schema.org metadata to content, and that this luxurious human syntax be
*compiled* to a much more compact machine-readable form. It's still going
to have to be text, not a pure binary format, since it's embedded in HTML
files, but that text could just be compact codes. We could easily write a
spec mapping the human syntax to machine-readable codes. This would help
solve the language issues because all language versions of the new
Schema.org would compile to universal codes for machine consumption. A
four-character coding system consisting of lowercase letters and numbers
gives us 1,336,336 possible codes (after eliminating two ambiguous
characters for the benefit of human readability and debugging: the letter l
and the number 1 (all lowercase means we can keep the letters i, o, and q;
so it's 34^4 = 1,336,336)). If we don't compile to codes, then we're
bloating web pages unnecessarily. And I also think that all the metadata in
the *heads *of HTML pages, like the FB OpenGraph, Twitter cards, Google,
Schema.org page- and site-level metadata, etc. should be put in a separate
file, perhaps called a *.meta* file on the same URL/directory. Browsers
don't need that metadata and parsing it is a small waste of time,
bandwidth, and energy that probably aggregates into a big waste of time,
bandwidth, and energy – that metadata exists only for consumption by other,
non-browser agents like search bots, FB, Twitter, etc. And it de-optimizes
gzip because it eats up some of the precious 32 KB gzip window with strings
that won't be seen again after the head.

Cheers,

JD


On Thu, Jul 12, 2018 at 2:29 PM Anthony Moretti <anthony.moretti@gmail.com>
wrote:

> I agree that it would work perfectly the same for machines with
> identifiers like Wikidata uses for example ("Q2" instead of "Earth"). But
> using English was a design decision to make it easier for humans to use I'm
> assuming, and as Gregg pointed out many organizations standardize on
> American English. Even though Joe is using inflammatory language, and
> probably shouldn't, his point is basically the same. I'm arguing more
> generally though, that regardless of the reason for a term to be changed,
> as they already do sometimes, maybe guidance could be given on how often
> it's allowed, thereby simplifying at least that part of the discussion.
>
> Anthony
>
>
> On Thu, Jul 12, 2018 at 2:07 PM David Elie Raymond Christophe Ammouial <
> david.elie.raymond.christophe.ammouial@everis.com> wrote:
>
>> In my opinion it's mostly irrelevant what the class name is called. A
>> Dutch, French or Portuguese speaker won't understand either and that's
>> fine. Should we discard all names because the majority of the world in 2018
>> won't understand them in their native language?
>>
>> This is like discussing whether "else" in programming languages should be
>> replaced by "otherwise". The fact that it mimics some familiar word is a
>> help for some but at the end of the day it's still a machine-readable,
>> technical term, that needs proper documentation for implementors to use
>> correctly.
>>
>> And Joe, I would recommend stopping using the invented phrase "Royalist
>> English" if you seek credibility as a standards advocate. Plus it's
>> provocative, which is not a favorable attitude inside consensus-seeking
>> dynamics. Some people have already expressed their feeling about that and
>> have been ignored.
>>
>> David
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Joe Duarte <songofapollo@gmail.com>
>> *Sent:* Tuesday, July 10, 2018 8:33:52 PM
>> *To:* richard.wallis@dataliberate.com
>> *Cc:* pete.rivett@adaptive.com; thadguidry@gmail.com; schema.org Mailing
>> List
>> *Subject:* Re: Eurocentrism, incorrect unit abbreviations, and
>> proprietary Royalist Engish (sic) terms
>>
>> ​Hi all – I'm puzzled again. ​
>> How does this
>> ​revision ​
>> improve the situation? It still uses Royalist English
>> ​ instead of American – that is, it still uses CampingPitch, which
>> American publishers and web developers will be unfamiliar with. The
>> American term is campsite. ​According to Michael Andrews, Indians also use
>> campsite. I see three issues:
>>
>>    1. ​Why are we using Royalist English for official terms? By default,
>>    shouldn't we be using American English since that's the vast majority of
>>    the English-speaking user base in 2018?
>>    2. The new paragraph is ponderous and out of place. It's a
>>    copy-and-paste from Wikipedia and doesn't fit the schema.org context (
>>    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campsite). There's a very long sentence
>>    that veers into the Royalist English for a camping *area*. Then the
>>    next sentence *very obliquely* reveals that the American term for a
>>    camping pitch is campsite. It never actually says anything as clear as "The
>>    American term for a camping pitch is campsite.​" The reason is that this
>>    copy/paste from Wikipedia *is from an article called Campsite*. The
>>    term campsite is assumed, and is the context for the write-up. Wikipedia is
>>    not using Royalist English by default in this case, preferring the American
>>    term, and their write-up makes a lot more sense as the intro to Campsite.
>>    It makes much less sense as the intro to Camping Pitch, which is where
>>    Richard put it.
>>
>>    3. ​Should schema.org provide some kind of localization for different
>>    dialects of English? Camping pitch is a great example because Americans
>>    will so thoroughly not understand it, ​since *pitch *is not
>>    understood as an area. (Whereas campsite is self-explanatory.) But in
>>    Britain, they'll need to use camping pitch. Can we have parallel terms?
>>
>>
>> C
>> ​heers,
>>
>> JD​
>>
>> On Mon, Jul 9, 2018, 9:31 AM Richard Wallis <
>> richard.wallis@dataliberate.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Github pull request (#2003
>>> <https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/pull/2003>) created to update
>>> the description of CampGround and CampingPitch.
>>>
>>> *CampGround:*
>>>
>>> A camping site, campsite, or Campground
>>> <http://localhost:8080/Campground> is a place used for overnight stay
>>> in the outdoors, typically containing individual CampingPitch
>>> <http://localhost:8080/CampingPitch> locations.
>>>
>>> In British English a campsite is an area, usually divided into a number
>>> of pitches, where people can camp overnight using tents or camper vans or
>>> caravans; this British English use of the word is synonymous with the
>>> American English expression campground. In American English the term
>>> campsite generally means an area where an individual, family, group, or
>>> military unit can pitch a tent or park a camper; a campground may contain
>>> many campsites (Source: Wikipedia see
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campsite).
>>>
>>> See also the dedicated document on the use of schema.org for marking up
>>> hotels and other forms of accommodations
>>> <http://localhost:8080/docs/hotels.html>.
>>>
>>>
>>> *CampingPitch:*
>>>
>>> A CampingPitch <http://localhost:8080/CampingPitch> is an individual
>>> place for overnight stay in the outdoors, typically being part of a larger
>>> camping site, or Campground <http://localhost:8080/Campground>.
>>>
>>> In British English a campsite, or campground, is an area, usually
>>> divided into a number of pitches, where people can camp overnight using
>>> tents or camper vans or caravans; this British English use of the word is
>>> synonymous with the American English expression campground. In American
>>> English the term campsite generally means an area where an individual,
>>> family, group, or military unit can pitch a tent or parks a camper; a
>>> campground may contain many campsites. (Source: Wikipedia see
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campsite).
>>>
>>> See also the dedicated document on the use of schema.org for marking up
>>> hotels and other forms of accommodations
>>> <http://localhost:8080/docs/hotels.html>.
>>>
>>>
>>> ~Richard.
>>>
>>> Richard Wallis
>>> Founder, Data Liberate
>>> http://dataliberate.com
>>> Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/richardwallis
>>> Twitter: @rjw
>>>
>>> On 5 July 2018 at 19:01, Pete Rivett <pete.rivett@adaptive.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The proposal suggests, but does not make explicit, that in American
>>>> English campsite is a synonym for CampingPitch.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Nitpick – there is a superfluous “s” in the following:
>>>>
>>>> means an area where an individual, family, group, or military unit can
>>>> pitch a tent or parks a camper;
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Pete
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *From:* Richard Wallis <richard.wallis@dataliberate.com>
>>>> *Sent:* Thursday, July 5, 2018 6:58 AM
>>>> *To:* Thad Guidry <thadguidry@gmail.com>
>>>> *Cc:* schema.org Mailing List <public-schemaorg@w3.org>
>>>> *Subject:* Re: Eurocentrism, incorrect unit abbreviations, and
>>>> proprietary Royalist Engish (sic) terms
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> @Thad & others,
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The Campground <https://schema.org/Campground> type has the following
>>>> description:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> A camping site, campsite, or campground is a place used for overnight
>>>> stay in the outdoors. In British English a campsite is an area, usually
>>>> divided into a number of pitches, where people can camp overnight using
>>>> tents or camper vans or caravans; this British English use of the word is
>>>> synonymous with the American English expression campground. In American
>>>> English the term campsite generally means an area where an individual,
>>>> family, group, or military unit can pitch a tent or parks a camper; a
>>>> campground may contain many campsites (Source: Wikipedia, the free
>>>> encyclopedia, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campsite).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Which I think covers things.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Whereas CampingPitch <https://schema.org/CampingPitch> has this:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> A camping pitch is an individual place for overnight stay in the
>>>> outdoors, typically being part of a larger camping site.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Which, under the current discussion, is a little lacking.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I therefore propose this:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> A [[CampingPitch]] is an individual place for overnight stay in the
>>>> outdoors, typically being part of a larger [[Campground]].
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> In British English a campsite, or campground, is an area, usually
>>>> divided into a number of pitches, where people can camp overnight using
>>>> tents or camper vans or caravans; this British English use of the word is
>>>> synonymous with the American English expression campground. In American
>>>> English the term *campsite* generally means an area where an
>>>> individual, family, group, or military unit can pitch a tent or parks a
>>>> camper; a campground may contain many campsites.
>>>>
>>>> (Source: Wikipedia see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campsite).
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Thoughts/comments?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ~Richard.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Richard Wallis
>>>>
>>>> Founder, Data Liberate
>>>>
>>>> http://dataliberate.com
>>>>
>>>> Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/richardwallis
>>>>
>>>> Twitter: @rjw
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 5 July 2018 at 14:12, Thad Guidry <thadguidry@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Since I care more about "Getting things done"...
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> As to the Campsite/Campground ... the USA and its government is fairly
>>>> clear and standardized on a Campground being the larger area and individual
>>>> reservable "pitchs" as being called "campsites".  The NPS.gov has the data
>>>> available as well with annual campsite bookings.  Here's one example:
>>>> https://www.nps.gov/maca/planyourvisit/campgrounds.htm
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> And Texas and other states started "campsite" or "camping pitch"
>>>> specific booking system just this year.
>>>> https://tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/park-reservation-information/site-specific-booking
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> So we probably could make mention about "campsite" and "campground" in
>>>> the definition to improve things.  So let's at least do that to make things
>>>> clear on both sides. :-)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> A camping pitch *(in the USA, a campsite)* is an individual place for
>>>> overnight stay in the outdoors, typically being part of a larger camping
>>>> site *or campground.*
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *@Richard* - would you mind doing that to improve the definition a bit
>>>> ?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -Thad
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>> ------------------------------
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