Re: Historical events

Thad,

 I’m new here, and don’t really understand the culture that gave rise to schema.org <http://schema.org/>, but it’s obvious to me that Event was designed specifically to model the types of events listed after the “such as…”, rather than to serve as a generic container for any occurrence in time, let alone period of time.  It feels a little surreal to be in the position of reiterating my discomfort with the notion of trying to stuff the Battle of Gettysburg into an object with properties like ‘doorTime’ and ‘performer’ on a mailing list frequented by people concerned with ontologies and the semantic Web, but here we are.

I’ll stop arguing the point now.  I’m not sure there’s any ROI for my application.  I can make effective use of Place, specifically LandmarksOrHistoricalBuildings (why is this plural?), and I’ll concentrate on that for now.

best,

Roger


> On May 30, 2018, at 10:58 AM, Thad Guidry <thadguidry@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Roger !
> 
> Good points.  However...
> 
> It is all up to the consuming applications to extract value from any structured data you provide.  Google, Bing, MyApplications, etc.
> 
> 99% of the applications will understand what you mean when you say
> 
>     Event : Bronze Age
> 
> If a machine or application has difficulty understanding the Semantic meaning of that statement ?  Then you can supply just a small handful of additional structure to tell that machine or application what you really mean.
> 
>     Event : Bronze Age
>     sameAs : https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11761 <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11761>
> 
> Your looking at the Event class description with the context of "...such as..."  DON'T, we provide merely examples.  It is best to concern yourself with only the leading description...
> "an event happening at a certain time and location"
> 
> And where we already have an understanding that Location is ... OPTIONAL :)
> 
> In fact, in all things Schema.org and Semantic Web, the only must-have property rule is that of "name".  Everything else is bonus structured data. "Some structure is better than no structure at all"
> 
> Its very likely in the next release that we update the description to simply be ... (which in my opinion we should have done long ago)
> 
> "an event happening at a certain time, this could include a location when necessary. Examples, concert, lecture, festival, Bronze Age"
> 
> -Thad
> 
> On Wed, May 30, 2018 at 12:25 PM Roger Rohrbach <roger@ecstatic.com <mailto:roger@ecstatic.com>> wrote:
> Thad,
> 
>  The Event class’ description is “an event happening at a certain time and location, such as a concert, lecture or festival.”  Its properties—composer, performer, organizer, audience, doorTime, workPerformed, review etc.—clearly adhere to this narrow definition.  You’re suggesting that we shoehorn World War II battles and the Bronze Age into this schema, and quell any uneasiness thus induced by referencing an external vocabulary.  I will admit that this is possible; to my mind, it is undesirable.  Were the Event type truly a “general type” capable of serving as the superclass for these two different semantic elements, I’d feel differently.
> 
> To use an analogy, it’s as if  schema.org <http://schema.org/> provided Funeral, but not Ceremony, and you told me “just use Funeral to represent Wedding, and reference  https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49836 <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q49836> as the additionalType.” 
> 
> I accept the premise that this is not a universal ontology.  But what classes there are, ought to retain their semantics.  The Bronze Age is not a-kind-of concert, lecture or festival.  I can’t see how your approach would result in truly machine-readable content.
> 
> respectfully,
> 
> Roger
> 
> 
>> On May 29, 2018, at 2:13 PM, Thad Guidry <thadguidry@gmail.com <mailto:thadguidry@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> 
>> Allison and Roger... see examples below.  Yes, you can still use Event.  When you don't have a startDate or endDate, then just leave them excluded.  The use of additionalType and referencing other ontologies or Wikidata is quite useful and a generally accepted best practice when you need to easily subtype things that Schema.org <http://schema.org/> has only general types available. 
>> 
>> {
>>   "@context": "http://schema.org <http://schema.org/>",
>>   "@type": "Event",
>>   "sameAs": "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q327052 <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q327052>",
>>   "additionalType": "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15815670 <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15815670>",
>>   "name": "Battle of Aachen",
>>   "startDate": "2 October 1944",
>>   "description": "major conflict during World War II",
>>   "endDate": "21 October 1944"
>> }
>> 
>> {
>>   "@context": "http://schema.org <http://schema.org/>",
>>   "@type": "Event",
>>   "sameAs": "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11761 <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11761>",
>>   "additionalType": "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15401699 <https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15401699>",
>>   "name": "Bronze Age",
>>   "description": "prehistoric period",
>>   "about": "Historical Event"
>> }
>> 
>> Any other questions ?
>> -Thad
>> 
>