Re: An updated draft of the schema.org/Action proposal

Thanks again for the thoughtful feedback Markus!


On Wed, Nov 13, 2013 at 12:06 PM, Markus Lanthaler <markus.lanthaler@gmx.net
> wrote:

> +public-hydra
>
> I prefer to comment here on the list instead of doing so directly on
> document [1-2] so that it is properly archived and that I can forward it to
> the Hydra mailing list as well.
>
> On Saturday, November 09, 2013 12:33 AM, Sam Goto wrote:
> > It has been a while since we've sent our latest update on the actions
> > proposal, so I tried to merge all the different
> > updates/improvements/feedback we got from different parts into an updated
> > proposal.
> >
> > Here is the new draft (and here is a version you can write comments on if
> > you'd like).
> >
> > We have solidified things in different areas, but most importantly the
> (a)
> > actions hierarchy, (b) the properties / semantic roles, (c) the statuzes
> > an action can be at and how to represent it, (d) a couple of well
> > understood action handlers and (e) the addition of Thing.operation to
> > point to an action which solves a wide variety of problems.
>
> Great to see hydra:operations being adopted.


Yep, this solves a wide set of problems. We had that originally in one of
our earlier drafts<http://www.w3.org/wiki/images/3/38/ActionsinSchema.org2013-05-11.pdf>
(as
Thing.action), but it took me a while to understand which problems it
solved. I understand it better now, so I'm happy to adopt!


> I'm still worried about the
> whole ActionHandler stuff as I've already explained in the past. This
> RPC-based model is quite anti-Web and thus I would like to see this stuff
> more aligned with how the Web works, i.e., the manipulation of resources by
> the exchange of state representations.
>
> I find this draft is a steps backwards in that regard as it couples the
> data
> expected by an action to the action itself:
>
>   "Each action has corresponding arguments/slots/parameters that
>    are well defined. Actions define a standard programmatic
>    predefined interface between parties (e.g. which arguments
>    "Watching a Movie" takes), and ActionHandlers helps with the
>    Mechanisms (e.g. invoking an action via an android intent vs
>    a HTTP GET)."
>

Just to be very clear, this specific regard (the fact that the schema
defines the arguments/parameters) is consistent with every single draft we
put out in the past (you can find all the earlier drafts
here<http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/ActivityActions>).
There are no changes in this draft on this subject.


>
> Do you really expect to, e.g., have different actions to rent a skiing
> shoes
> from renting a house?


I expect there will be high coverage of common nouns and verbs in
http://schema.org long term. We have a http://schema.org/RentAction, which
can be used in combination with nouns like http://schema.org/SkiingShoes or
http://schema.org/House as these become problems that really need to be
modeled.

For the long tail of problems, the extension
mechanism<http://schema.org/docs/extension.html> can
help us understand verbs/nouns that are not yet in http://schema.org.


> Currently RentAction's "parameters" according to your
> draft [2] are "landlord" and "realEstateAgent". What's the rationale behind
> this decision? I think the sole purpose of the action itself should be to
> convey the semantics of what happens or, in other words, what the
> consequences I can expect when I invoke an action.
>
>
I think that should be one of the goals, yes. In addition to that goal, I
believe it is important for actions to define which arguments/parameters
they take.


> I think I'll write a draft describing how the relevant parts of Hydra could
> be integrated into schema.org. Is that something you would be interested
> in?
> I'll probably write it in a similar style than your draft or do you prefer
> another form?
>
>
> > This is by no means done but we feel it is firm enough to have a
> > constructive round of feedback from an increasingly larger group.
> Markus's
> > feedback, from hydra, has been overwhelmingly constructive and objective
> > and we really appreciate that.
>
> Thanks for the nice words,
> Markus
>
>
> [1]
>
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JDD8kOsSoe2BrQVCm1t2cmcGGlj0gwcvOHfWmXTB
> ndM/edit
> [2] http://www.w3.org/wiki/images/1/16/Schema.orgActions.pdf
>
>
> --
> Markus Lanthaler
> @markuslanthaler
>
>