Re: Proposal: make http://schema.org/Offer more friendly for non-commercial usage

On Thu, Sep 12, 2013 at 11:14:10PM +1000, Renato Iannella wrote:
>
>Thanks for that Dan...some feedback...
>
>"schema.org/Offer" include "rights", "service" and is probably missing
>"product"....but I wonder if it is better to define Offer more on the
>process rather than the list of things that can be offered. We seem to
>use the generic "item" for anything...so perhaps a cleaner definition
>could be: "To present an item for consideration".

Right. It took me a while to figure out why "item" seems to have special
meaning in the schema.org docs, but I eventually realized that the usage
of "item" is more generally tied to the semantic types being marked up
(which explains the microdata itemtype / itemscope property names and
the references to "item" in the RDFa spec, for example). For those
coming to schema.org without that broader context, then, I'm concerned
that "item" is going to strongly suggest material goods rather than the
more inclusive products-and-services. (But perhaps that's based too much
on my own thick-headedness!)

>BTW, it would be good if schema.org allowed definitions to standalone,
>and not force the "for example" text into the definitions (not good
>11179 ;-) and added a notes metadata attribute...

I, too, admit to feeling a little discomfort about the heavy reliance on
examples in the definitions. It might be interesting to put together an
experimental draft that separates the inline examples from the
definitions, at least for a subset of the vocabulary: I suspect that it
would end up pushing us to strengthen the definitions in the long run.

If the brief examples were kept adjacent to the definitions in the docs,
then I think it would assuage Thad's concern that the examples are
extremely useful (a concern I also share).  But in the short-term, I
would be happy if we could just clarify the intended usage for what
already exists in the vocabulary using the current structure.

Received on Thursday, 12 September 2013 14:42:38 UTC