Re: schema.org/Place: replace faxNumber and telephone with contactPoint

+Cc: Guha

On 3 June 2013 07:04, Max Froumentin
<Max.Froumentin@digital.justice.gov.uk> wrote:
> Hi Matthias,
>
> Thanks for your response.  The fact that "telephone" and "faxNumber" are text makes contactPoint seem not so useful:
>
> writing:
> <div itemprop="ContactPoint">
(I think you mean @itemtype here?)
> <div itemprop="contactType">Switchboard</div>
> <div itemprop="telephone">02 42 68 53 00</div>
> </div>
>
> is pretty much the same as
>
> <div itemprop="telephone">Switchboard: 02 42 68 53 00 </div>
>
> no?

(so the issue is that you want to use the contact-oriented properties
from Organization but Courthouse is only a subtype of Place, not of
Organization. Organization has some but not all of the contact
properties, and lacks 'contactPoint').

The core issue is that some but not "Place" entities are
"Organizations". Currently in schema.org this is handled as follows:

http://schema.org/Organization and http://schema.org/Place both have
several subtypes, but only one subtype (LocalBusiness) takes both of
these as supertypes,ie. says "anything that is a LocalBusiness will
always be both a Place and an Organization". This allows possibility
that sometimes other entities fall under both types, though.

* Place subtypes: AdministrativeArea CivicStructure Landform
LandmarksOrHistoricalBuildings LocalBusiness Residence
TouristAttraction
* Organization subtypes: Corporation EducationalOrganization
GovernmentOrganization LocalBusiness NGO PerformingGroup SportsTeam

The only type inheriting from both is "LocalBusiness". I can see why
you might not want to present a Courthouse as a LocalBusiness if you
read "local business" in narrow terms. However we do have
http://schema.org/GovernmentOffice (containing PostOffice), also
http://schema.org/Library under LocalBusiness. LocalBusiness means
more than 'Shop'.

BTW the fact that we have contact info attached to Place is also
sometimes awkward. Our microformats friends found it funny that a
Volcano might have a faxNumber; and more recently I noticed that a
Country (also a 'Place') can have 'opening hours'.

My advice would be to publish in RDFa and mix-in both types at the
instance level when it makes sense, rather have schema.org itself say
for each type which one will also always be a place. We don't say
anything that stops something being both a Courthouse and a
GovernmentBuilding, for example. (in fact I think Microdata is fine
with multiple types too, so long as they come from the same
vocabulary, which they do in this case).

While we could tweak the type hierarchy and add more Place subtypes
under Organization (or LocalBusiness) that seems an endless task.

We should probably add contactPoint into Place. (e.g. A Volcano having
a contactPoint seems better than it having a faxNumber...).

Does that help?

Dan

>>> One could claim that a phone number belongs to an organisation and not a place, but:
>>> - the "telephone" and "faxNumber" properties are already on Place, as text.
>>> - my use-case is court houses, which I annotate as Courthouse, which descends from Place, not Organization.

Received on Monday, 3 June 2013 14:55:42 UTC