Re: new itemscope or not?

Dear Cord,

Schema.org  does not provide a validation/correctness mechanism. 
According with their documentation property values should follow an 
INTENDED TYPE, e.g,  "author" value should be an instance of 
http://schema.org/Person
However, if the web master cannot provide a complete   markup, as your 
first example , then an "incomplete" markup can be used (your second 
example).

It is the responsibility  of the annotation processor to "understand" 
the necessary instance i.e., "Shakespeare, William" is the name of a 
http://schema.org/Person

As such, the first solution is the better and desirable (I guess you 
tested with http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets ), the 
second is not the best, but still can be used instead doing nothing.

Use annotations!

Regards,
Adrian

On 9/6/2012 5:40 PM, Cord Wiljes wrote:
> **Dear all,
>
> if I want to describe a book in schema.org: Which of the following two 
> versions is correct / better?
>
>     <div itemscope itemtype ="http://schema.org/Book">
>        <span itemprop="author" itemscope
>     itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><span
>     itemprop="name">Shakespeare, William</span></span>
>     </div>
>
> Or just:
>
>     <div itemscope itemtype ="http://schema.org/Book">
>        <span itemprop="author">Shakespeare, William</span>
>     </div>
>
> Best,
> Cord
>
> -- 
> Cord Wiljes
> Semantic Computing Group
> Excellence Cluster - Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC)
> Bielefeld University
>
> Phone: +49 521 106 12036
> Mail:cwiljes@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de
> WWW:http://www.sc.cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de/people/wiljes
>
> Room H-123
> Morgenbreede 39
> 33615 Bielefeld

-- 
-Adrian
Twitter <http://www.twitter.com/giurca>
LinkedIn <http://www.linkedin.com/in/adriangiurca>