Re: Things for Sale vs Reference Information

To be honest, I am not sure how
http://wiki.goodrelations-vocabulary.org/Documentation/Conceptual_model is
relevant for a website that is attempting to be a reference database
(encyclopedia) rather than an e-commerce platform.

The ProductModel is supposedly used for product data, which seems the best
fit.  But, imagine you are trying to describe the properties of an 1863
silver dime minted in San Francisco.  You are NOT trying to sell one, but
rather you want to provide data about how many were made, who designed it,
and what the metallurgical composition is.  Is ProductModel really the best
fit?

And does anyone know why the Google Search Console is puking out messages
that * either* *"offers", "review", or aggregaterating should be
specified *when
there is no such message coming out of the Structured Data Testing Tool?
The ProductModel at least should be immune to this....

On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 11:54 AM Martin Hepp <mfhepp@gmail.com> wrote:

> Short answer:
> Use Product or Service for the things.
> Use Offer for any statement to transfer or grant rights on the thing for a
> compensation (e.g. a monetary amount).
>
> See also here:
>
> http://wiki.goodrelations-vocabulary.org/Documentation/Conceptual_model
>
> GoodRelations is the conceptual basis for the e-commerce part of
> schema.org.
>
> You can (but don’t have to) be more precise wrt whether the thing is a
> single, identifiable item (like a particular iPhone with a certain serial
> number, as in an eBay auction), a bag of multiple identical products (like
> those on an Amazon offer), or the datasheetnor product model (e.g. on a
> manufacturer’s page).
>
> See the subclasses of schema:Product for details.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Martin
> ---------------------------------------
> martin hepp
> www:  http://www.heppnetz.de/
> email: mhepp@computer.org
>
>
> Am 11.03.2019 um 15:53 schrieb George Michaels <gdm@trovestar.com>:
>
>
> Perhaps there is a standard answer to this question.  Perhaps there should
> be an additional field on Thing.
>
>
> Some pages (eBay, Amazon) clearly describe things that are for sale.
> Other pages, might be more akin to encyclopedia pages (wikis).  It seems to
> me that a Thing page should be able to describe itself as one or the
> other.  This can assist people by differentiating between searches for
> people looking to buy something vs people looking to learn more about
> something.
>
>
> In the world of financial securities, we differentiate the two types of
> data as being either “market data” or “security master data”.
>
>
> Perhaps subclassing thing into thing-for-sale versus thing-description is
> the right way to go.  I assume someone has already given this some thought
> and can explain to me the accepted solution for differentiation.
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
> George
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
>
>
>

-- 
George Michaels
Founder, TroveStar LLC
gdm@trovestar.com
www.trovestar.com