RE: Web feeds for "Blog" types

Hi,

This is a good question.  I really do not like the term "blog" in a
technical sense, and for personal reasons I'll reveal at the end. 

WHAT IS A BLOG? 
A "blog" is a term that refers to a collection of postings. However, a
website labeled as a "blog" may also contain static pages and dynamic
elements in addition to simply posts. In WordPress the practical difference
between a Post and a Page is that a Page doesn't display the author, doesn't
display the date and lacks categorization features. In essence a Page is a
Post lacking certain features. 
If I published a series of pages over time around a certain subject, for
example weather conditions, I'd be technically "blogging".
Someone may refer to their collection of posts on a site they don't own as
their "blog", for example with Tumblr. Is it "their blog"?
I don't know. Nor is it useful for me to consider how they label it. 

WHAT IS A WEBSITE? 
You've got webpages at URLS that output their content using HTML or some
other broadly parsable markup language allowing hyperlinking. 
The site is a CreativeWork. Pages are published on the site which are their
own CreativeWorks. Pages contain other content that are also CreativeWorks,
for example images, code, collections, etc. All of these things can be
created and published separately by different Persons at different times.
The hasPart and isPartOf properties can be used to define relationships, if
desired, but since an asset is included in a "blog" does that necessarily
make it a child? No. All these different content pieces don't necessarily
have parent-child relationships. 

NOT EVERTHING WITH POSTS AND FEEDS IS A BLOG
I work with JobPosting schema a lot. We both submit directly to the Google
API and publish RSS feeds for our job listings. I wouldn't ever think of
publishing JobPostings without a RSS feed, even with the API submissions
making it superfluous. Also I wouldn't ever exclude them from sitemaps.
These are postings, 100%, but nobody refers to a job board as a "blog".   

THE WAY PEOPLE USE THE TERM BLOG IS DEROGATORY 
A blog is thought of as something "less important" or "less professional"
than a website by the public as a whole, by laypeople who don't publish
sites themselves. I've had the term "local blog" thrown at my local news
sites in a pejorative fashion. The site doesn't just have me as an author -
it's got over a hundred different authors of really great articles about
local topics. The local politicians who weren't happy with what I was
publishing weren't referring to my use of WordPress or inclusion of dates
and authors on the Posts. The local "news" sites who act as mouthpieces for
them use WordPress as well and also include such elements on their articles
yet nobody ever refers to them as "blogs". 

What do we think is best for AI to learn? Is there as much of a value in
keeping the distinction given how its so subjective?  

IMHO CAN THE TERM BLOG
If it were my call I'd just deprecate the whole "Blog" type and simply use
"WebSite" in its place. In my humble opinion it's just not different enough.
Let's just can it. 

This is an issue I considered carefully. I created a curation plugin for
WordPress that allow Works to be defined as Custom Post Types: "Art Gallery
Plugin". There are 13 types of Digital Creations provided for. Website is
one of the 13.  Blog is not. I don't feel like neglecting the distinction
prevents someone to be able to fully represent what an instance of a  'blog"
is. 

WHAT IS A SERIES? 
I write articles for multiple websites. In all cases I publish them on
WordPress as Posts. However, I don't see all posts on a site being a
"CreativeWorkSeries". If, however I was doing a multi-part article around
the same topic I would practically refer to that subset of posts as a
"Series". For example I might write a couple reviews of the local
pet-friendly hotels. That would be specific enough to call a "series" but my
reviews of all lodging establishments  in an area might not qualify as such,
especially if reviewing hotels is a fixed feature of my site and that's all
I write about. If on the other hand I often write about a variety of topic
and I infrequently write reviews about hotels then I might refer to all my
hotel reviews as a series.  

When I think "series" I think TV shows where the characters stay the same.
Once it's a collection of a hodgepodge of topics, or even one topic that's
too broad (like all lodging establishments in an area) then it's not a
series.  Not all shows on one TV channel are a series. Not all shows
produced by the same Persons are a series. Not everyone might agree with
this definition and examples. Someone may see all their blog posts as a
series and someone else my only see subsets of all their blog posts as
separate series, not wanting to refer to the whole of their work as a
series. 

I hope this was all useful. 

I'd like to know if anyone else had their sites "demeaned" by the referring
to them as "blogs". 

Peace out! 
-JP 



-----Original Message-----
From: Rohan Kumar <seirdy@seirdy.one> 
Sent: Friday, May 20, 2022 4:06 PM
To: public-schemaorg@w3.org
Subject: Web feeds for "Blog" types

Hi,

Currently, the "webFeed" property is supported for PodcastSeries and
SpecialAnnouncement. PodcastSeries is an type of CreativeWorkSeries which is
a type of CreativeWork.

A Blog, however, is type of CreativeWork that may have several blogPosting
children. This seems odd, since both blogs and podcast series are
technically and semantically similar.

A Blog, IMO, should be a CreativeWorkSeries since it contains multiple
CreativeWork elements of the type BlogPosting. Moreover, it also should have
a webFeed in the form of an RSS/ATOM/JSON feed or a Microformats
h-feed/hAtom.

What do you all think?

--
Seirdy

Received on Monday, 23 May 2022 21:44:46 UTC