Re: Audience and suggestedMaxAge property

I agree that a notion of maxAge is useful (be it recommendedMaxAge
or suggestedMaxAge). Age range is used as facet on e-commerce sites such as
[1]. You can find similar age range on some item detail pages as well, for
example this game of Angry Birds [2] says "Manufacturer recommended age: 5
- 9 years". Despite this recommendation, I bought this as a gift for a 30+,
proof that it can be fun for those older than 9 yo. It's up to the consumer
to do what they want with this info.

Steph.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/s/?field-keywords=board+games
[2] http://www.amazon.com/Angry-Birds-Knock-Wood-Game/dp/B004U52VPS/

On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 2:29 PM, Karen Coyle <kcoyle@kcoyle.net> wrote:

> Just to add a similar usage, materials aimed at K-12 students and teachers
> often include a grade range ("grades 3-6") which is a suggested
> minimum/maximum. It doesn't look to me that the educational community has
> yet added its view to schema.org, but age and/or grade and/or skills
> level will naturally be a part of that. The GEM vocabulary [1] includes
> grade, level and age, and those can be ranges. They aren't meant to
> exclude, they are information for educators (or parents) who are seeking
> appropriate materials. I think of it as a "clue" rather than a "rule."
>
> kc
> [1] http://dublincore.org/groups/**education/GEM-Study.html<http://dublincore.org/groups/education/GEM-Study.html>
>
>
> On 12/13/12 11:06 AM, Dan Brickley wrote:
>
>> (top posting, but leaving some context below)
>>
>> Phil,
>>
>> We've discussed this (and your points below) amongst the schema.org
>> partners. Here is a sketch of a compromise approach.
>>
>> 1. First, we acknowledge that schemas are useful when they reflect the
>> complexity of real life rather than codifying over-stereotypical or
>> cartoon views of the world, even though schemas by definition are
>> always to some extent simplified descriptions. For example, schemas
>> that describe people and model gender as a static binary property are
>> over-simplifying the lives of many people, and can casually cause
>> entirely avoidable offense. Although lots of Web sites do simplify in
>> this way, it is probably not a good idea to have binary 'gender'
>> properties in Web schemas, since sites that offer a more realistic
>> nuanced view of the world shouldn't be forced to adopt the simplified
>> view.
>>
>> 2. Generally sites have an incentive not to arbitrarily exclude
>> potential audiences from their materials and offers; suggestedMaxAge
>> is therefore probably of modest interest to most publishers.
>>
>> 3. There are some reasonable use cases for targeting content and
>> offers by gender (e.g. health), and age (e.g. mortgage policies). Any
>> reasonably expressive descriptive schema can be used to say
>> ill-advised things. While there are unreasonable or foolish or
>> tasteless or thoughtless potential uses of such vocabulary; it is not
>> clear that restricting schema.org's vocabulary will help discourage
>> sites from saying those things in natural language. It is hard to make
>> general schema design policies in this area, and perhaps better to
>> consider terms case by case. In this particular case, sites that
>> needlessly exclude audiences may well be nudged more by common sense
>> (why exclude potential customers?) than by the decisions of schema
>> designers.
>>
>> 4. Schema.org provides a dictionary of terms; it leaves open the
>> possibility of very different uses being made of those terms. You
>> could use it to make a search system that excluded sites it deemed
>> sexist or ageist or otherwise socially regressive. Or you could use it
>> quite opposite ways. Neither usage scenario would be dictated by the
>> definition of 'suggestedMaxAge'; the property would just make the
>> statements from publishers easier to compute with.
>>
>> My sense is that there is enough reason to add such a property, but
>> that it is worth documenting the fact that it is generally less useful
>> than the suggested*Minimum*Age property. Speaking personally, although
>> I do feel the Guardian-reading liberal urge to try to reform the world
>> through schema design, I think that impulse should generally be
>> restricted to avoiding patterns (eg. the gender example given earlier)
>> whose every use is somehow problematic.
>>
>> Thanks for any further thoughts on this,
>>
>> cheers,
>>
>> Dan
>>
>>
>> On 10 December 2012 18:10, Egor Antonov <elderos@yandex-team.ru> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Phil,
>>>
>>> thanks for the review.
>>> Let me emphasize, that these properties are not restrictive (at the last
>>> schema.org talk we decided to rename them to suggestedMinAge etc to
>>> make it
>>> more clear).
>>> It's just a hint for personalization issues, pointing at the nucleous of
>>> people, who maybe want to view/buy/use some content.
>>> If somebody searches for films, he/she probably wants to see that films
>>> which are intended for his/her age (and gender, too).
>>> Also, there can be non-matching correlation between user and intended
>>> audience.
>>> We can understand, that somebody likes non-typical (for his age/gender)
>>> things and suggest those things he/she likes.
>>>
>>> There are many websites with products, services and  creative works,
>>> which
>>> explicitly mark their audience:
>>> Games (5-12 years old):
>>> http://www.mosigra.ru/Face/**Show/detskie_detektivi_5_12/<http://www.mosigra.ru/Face/Show/detskie_detektivi_5_12/>
>>> Sport classes (mostly constrained by age in Russia): http://ttcentr.ru/
>>> Music courses (also russian): http://www.muz-school.ru/**courses/deti<http://www.muz-school.ru/courses/deti>
>>> http://www.ssww.com/item/**candy-land-GA4700/cmc=**
>>> BRWSGAMBRDYTH/grp=GAM/sbgrp=**BRD/ln=YTH/fp=GA4700/sort=**sales/p=1/<http://www.ssww.com/item/candy-land-GA4700/cmc=BRWSGAMBRDYTH/grp=GAM/sbgrp=BRD/ln=YTH/fp=GA4700/sort=sales/p=1/>
>>> http://www.games14.co/
>>> http://www.gymboree.com/index.**jsp?ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=**
>>> 1408474395917465&FOLDER%3C%**3Efolder_id=2534374303003787&**
>>> bmUID=1354815600298<http://www.gymboree.com/index.jsp?ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=1408474395917465&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374303003787&bmUID=1354815600298>
>>> (see categories)
>>>
>>> (I skip huge amount of woman clothes)
>>>
>>
>>    2. The Audience proposal; based on the RDFa schema in
>>>   https://bitbucket.org/elderos/**schemaorg/src<https://bitbucket.org/elderos/schemaorg/src>I've built a test version
>>>   of the schema.org site that includes the Audience proposal (see
>>>   http://www.w3.org/wiki/**WebSchemas/Audience<http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/Audience>). The draft site is at
>>>   http://sdo99a.appspot.com e.g. see http://sdo99a.appspot.com/**
>>> Audience <http://sdo99a.appspot.com/Audience>
>>>
>>> [..]
>>>
>>>   From a technical point of view, this is fine of course. From an ethical
>>> one, there are aspects I find seriously worrying if not potentially
>>> offensive.
>>>
>>> Why does anyone need to define the maximum age of an audience? An adult
>>> friend of mine is not a strong reader. He reads books targeted at 11
>>> year olds - and enjoys them. Why put it in his face that he's reading
>>> children's books?
>>>
>>> Minimum age - fine. We understand that. But you won't ever see a maximum
>>> age on a film or game.
>>>
>>> Daft. Drop it.
>>>
>>> Gender? For a target audience? What? OK, so I'm a wishy washy dripping
>>> wet liberal but if a girl wants to play with "boys' toys" or a boy wants
>>> to read "chick lit" - why not? I think the content should speak for
>>> itself and the potential consumer decide whether he/she wants it. The
>>> Twilight saga is basically aimed at teenage girls, yes? I know at least
>>> one teenage boy that read the whole series and many post-teenage girls
>>> who enjoyed it too.
>>>
>>> Of course content *is* targeted at gender, but I don't think it should
>>> be part of the data.
>>>
>>> Drop it.
>>>
>>> The parental ones - i.e. this is for parents of children aged x - y does
>>> make sense. That's potentially useful for parents.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
> --
> Karen Coyle
> kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
> ph: 1-510-540-7596
> m: 1-510-435-8234
> skype: kcoylenet
>
>


-- 
Steph.