Re: ISSUE-17: schema.org has NGO, EducationalOrganization, SportsTeam, GovernmentOrganization but not Labo[u]r Union

On 9 May 2013 13:56, Kendall Clark <kendall@clarkparsia.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 7:45 AM, Dan Brickley <danbri@danbri.org> wrote:
>>
>> Kendall,
>>
>> I recorded this issue last year after you pointed out that schema.org
>> has various organizational types, but nothing for the class of things
>> that are 'Labour Unions'. This is a flaw I'd like to fix.
>>
>> http://www.w3.org/2011/webschema/track/issues/17
>> https://twitter.com/kendall/status/210422142620286976
>>
>> I come from an English speaking country where people say "trade union"
>> rather than "labo[u]r union"; I don't have a good intuition for how
>> odd "trade union" might sound elsewhere.
>
> Trade union is used most often on the Web, according to Google.
>
> It's not the usual term in the US, but people (who care) certainly know what
> it means.
>
> However, if schema.org prefers US English, then "labor union" seems the
> obvious choice. It's by far the dominant form in the US. (Not that I think
> that's a good reason to choose it; but I don't set the rules Schema.org
> plays by, etc.)
>
>>
>> Do you (or others here) have
>> any thoughts or preferences on a good and intuitive name for this
>> concept? Schema.org uses US English when a choice is needed, but it's
>> good to aim at terms that are the same in as many variants of English
>> as possible.
>
>
> Other possibilities:
>
> "workers union" or just "union".

Schema.org has the challenge of trying to squeeze a lot of diverse
domains into a flat namespace. For that reason I lean more towards
WorkersUnion than plain Union. Searching using the phrase "workers
union" finds a lot of relevant pages, it is fairly self-descriptive
and not ambiguous. I can't think of another sense of Union we'd want a
type for right now, but it's a very general word (an SQL ontology?).

(BTW I noticed yesterday we have the (Organization) ArtGallery and we
have (WebPage) ImageGallery. Both make sense in their context but
presented together look a little odd.)

>> I'm not sure if there are subtle substantive differences between
>> 'labor union' and 'trade union'.
>
>
> Only geographic, IMO. They refer to the same concept (in some general,
> family resemblance kind of way, of course).

Thanks, that's helpful.

>> Would "Trade Union" be workable to US-English ears? I have a mild
>> preference for it because it avoids the word "labor"/"labour", which
>> has two spellings.
>
>
> Workable in that people know what it means? Yes.
>
> But it would seem kind of oddball if, generally, Schema.org prefers US
> English.
>
> I think given all the context, "Union" is a fine choice.

Understood re Trade Union. How about this,

URI: http://schema.org/WorkersUnion
Blurb: "A Workers Union (also known as a Labor Union, Labour Union, or
Trade Union) is an organization of workers who have banded together to
achieve common goals."

...this text comes partly from Wikipedia. I'd like to have something
other than 'banded together' but I can't think of an improvement right
now.

Dan

Received on Thursday, 9 May 2013 13:18:21 UTC