Re: Historical events

Hello, Thad,

As you know I am a newcomer here. I don’t intend to stomp on toes, merely to understand.

I am quite happy to volunteer as a stakeholder in the region of developing cultural and historical microdata. Consumers for my kind of work might welcome having search engines understand that a NaturalEvent (volcanic eruption) is different from a PoliticalEvent (coronation of a monarch), for example. I am quite sincere when I ask how that puts a burden on you or other stakeholders?

I’m sorry, I don’t know your role in Schema.org<http://Schema.org>: why would you have 242 tasks to give me?

I am interested in providing microdata that is parallel to, equivalent to, something like FoodEvent when it comes to history and culture. Why is FoodEvent appropriate and not HistoricalEvent? I’m just curious about pursuing the best approach. I’m not proposing anything: I am suggesting options, and asking for expert advice on what might be worth pursuing.

All the best,
Allison


On Jun 1, 2018, at 8:59 PM, Thad Guidry <thadguidry@gmail.com<mailto:thadguidry@gmail.com>> wrote:

Allison,

The repercussions are that it is a never ending list of Event subtypes.  A maintenance nightmare where the burden is put on Me, Schema.org<http://Schema.org> stakeholders, Wikidata, Communities, Ontology Departments, etc. (but some say that's fine, because as schema providers, its our job to do the hard work, so that it is easier for consumers).  But honestly, it is actually providing LESS structured information, rather than MORE, until someone on our end or a volunteer connects all the little dots to make the magic of Semantic Understanding happen behind the scenes.

You still have to classify, unless Schema.org<http://Schema.org> decides to maintain ontology mappings and lots of rich understanding of Types stored in an ever expanding RDF file (they don't want to, and that makes sense, so instead volunteers like me connect the dots in areas outside of Schema.org<http://Schema.org> RDF file)

These Types you listed are easy for you and I to understand, like an Event about Natural Things.  A computer won't understand it verbatim, you have to give more info, or train it to recognize:

Scenario 1 - Easy For You
NaturalEvent:

(computer: wait, what kind of event specifically ? What does Natural mean?  Is that the same as Nature ? wait, what Nature are we talking about again ? who owns Nature ? what time is it again :-) ?)
<here is where the burden of making sense of it for you and search tools, is put on volunteers and paid publishers and ontologists>

Oh yeah, and that's just for 1 Event subtype your asking for.

Are you willing to volunteer to maintain lots of metadata for all those Event subtypes ?  If you are, GREAT !  I have 242 extra tasks I can give you right now. (not counting Naval Ship Classes de-tangling because someone offlist asked us to)

versus

Scenario 2 - Easy for Us (Schema.org<http://Schema.org> and volunteers around the world, like me)

Event:
  about: {
    name: Nature
    sameAs: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q7860
    ,
    name: Disaster
    sameAs: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3839081
    }

  additionalType: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8065
  diambiguatingDescription: A natural disaster event specifically, i.e. a Disaster created by natural phenomenen

I am open to either scenario, but Scenario 1 comes with a hell of a lot of maintenance work for many folks and volunteers all around the world.  We'd be glad to make you one of those :-)

-Thad

On Fri, Jun 1, 2018 at 8:39 PM Muri, Allison <allison.muri@usask.ca<mailto:allison.muri@usask.ca>> wrote:
This all makes sense to me. Thank you, Richard and Phil.

So let’s say that historical event could become a type of Event. What would be the repercussions of adding to this list of Types for Event:

More specific Types
• BusinessEvent
• ChildrensEvent
• ComedyEvent
• CourseInstance
• DanceEvent
• DeliveryEvent
• EducationEvent
• ExhibitionEvent
• Festival
• FoodEvent
• LiteraryEvent
• MusicEvent
• PublicationEvent
• SaleEvent
• ScreeningEvent
• SocialEvent
• SportsEvent
• TheaterEvent
• VisualArtsEvent


… such Types as:

• HistoricalEvent
• HistoricalPeriod
• InventionEvent
• MilitaryConflictEvent
• NaturalEvent
• DiseaseEvent or DiseaseOutbreakEvent

… etc.?

After all this very interesting conversation, I must say I am a bit perplexed as to why anyone would object to providing more specific markup concerning historical events, when such types as LiteraryEvent or FoodEvent seem quite uncontroversial.


....................................................
Allison Muri
Department of English

Arts 418
University of Saskatchewan
Saskatoon, SK, Canada
ph: 306.966.5503