Re: Why is the video property bound to creative work?

Thanks Martin, that helped a lot.

Now putting the discussion about how multiple 'root' entities are handled,
by search engines and other data-consumers, aside for a moment. (Although
it might be a nice topic for new thread), I do want to re-use you code for
a moment to illustrate what's missing from my point of view, and multiple
root 'entites' serves quite nicely for this.

Imagine a page has 2 'root' entities which aren't linked to the WebPage by
means of a property then I would use @itemid to have both entities link to
each other as such:

<div itemid="video-object" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/VideoObject
">
  <link itemprop="about" href="product">

  <h2>Video: <span itemprop="name">Video of the Personal SCSI controller in
use</span></h2>
  <meta itemprop="duration" content="T1M33S" />
  <meta itemprop="thumbnail" content="personal-scsi-thumb.jpg" />
  <object ...>
    <param ...>
    <embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" ...>
  </object>

  <span itemprop="description">In this short video, we show how to use the
controller in typical setting.</span>
</div>

<div itemid="product" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Product">
  <link itemprop="video" href="video-object">

  <span itemprop="name">The Personal SCSI Controller by ACME
Technology</span>
  <!-- other product properties go here -->
</div>

In this case both entities have a global identifier which should make it
possible to have both items link to each other. Now the VideoObject points
to the Product by means of <link itemprop="about" href="product"> but I
can't achieve this the other way around. In an ideal world <link
itemprop="video" href="video-object"> would achieve the same relation only
inversed but unfortunately Product doesn't have a 'video' property.

Which could be resolved by either having 'video' be part of Thing or having
a completely new property like 'related' as you proposed. Either way,
there's something missing right now to provide this type of relationship.





On Tue, Apr 8, 2014 at 3:42 PM, martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org <
martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org> wrote:

> Hi Jarno:
>
> Below is how I would model a product video with the current set of
> elements.
> In general I would suggest that if a use-case can be sufficiently covered
> with existing elements, we rather encourage search engines to implement
> support for the respective markup rather than adding redundant conceptual
> elements that are there just because search engines prefer a particular
> direction of a relationship.
>
> Example: Product with video:
>
> <div itemprop="video" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/VideoObject"
> itemref="product">
>   <h2>Video: <span itemprop="name">Video of the Personal SCSI controller
> in use</span></h2>
>   <meta itemprop="duration" content="T1M33S" />
>   <meta itemprop="thumbnail" content="personal-scsi-thumb.jpg" />
>
>   <object ...>
>     <param ...>
>     <embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" ...>
>   </object>
>   <span itemprop="description">In this short video, we show how to use the
> controller in typical setting.</span>
> </div>
>
>
> <div id="product">
>   <div itemprop="about" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ProductModel
> ">
>           <span itemprop="name">The Personal SCSI Controller by ACME
> Technology</span>
>           <!-- other product properties go here -->
>   </div>
> </div>
>
>
>
>
> Best wishes / Mit freundlichen Grüßen
>
> Martin Hepp
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
> martin hepp
> e-business & web science research group
> universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen
>
> e-mail:  martin.hepp@unibw.de
> phone:   +49-(0)89-6004-4217
> fax:     +49-(0)89-6004-4620
> www:     http://www.unibw.de/ebusiness/ (group)
>          http://www.heppnetz.de/ (personal)
> skype:   mfhepp
> twitter: mfhepp
>
> Check out GoodRelations for E-Commerce on the Web of Linked Data!
> =================================================================
> * Project Main Page: http://purl.org/goodrelations/
>
>
>
>
> On 08 Apr 2014, at 15:10, Jarno van Driel <jarno@quantumspork.nl> wrote:
>
> > "Conceptually, this is not true, since you can use itemref in
> Microdata..."
> >
> > Would you be so kind to provide a small markup example, that illustrates
> this. I think I understand what you mean but unfotunately without an
> example I'm not sure if I understand you correctly.
> >
> > Op 8 apr. 2014 14:20 schreef "martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org" <
> martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org>:
> > Conceptually, this is not true, since you can use itemref in Microdata
> or a unique identifier in RDFa to make the video the outer entitity in the
> nesting.
> > However, search engines have, in practice, two problems with this:
> >
> > 1. Rich snippets and similar techniques often depend on finding one main
> entity type, and use the outermost entities (root entities) in the syntax
> for that task. So a Web page with a VideoObject and an Offer nested therein
> may not trigger a product snippet because the search engine thinks it was
> mainly a page about a video.
> >
> > 2. The linkage between entities on the basis of identifiers in RDFa is,
> to my experience, not properly supported by major search engines, so in
> reality, my proposed pattern will only work in Microdata.
> >
> > Martin
> >
> >
> >
> > On 08 Apr 2014, at 13:01, Jarno van Driel <jarno@quantumspork.nl> wrote:
> >
> > > But of course you can also model it the other way round...
> > >
> > > True but only in cases where VideoObject is the main object. When the
> main object is something else, which isn't part of the CreativeWork branch,
> then there is no way to link a video by means of a 'video' property.
> > >
> > >
> > > On Tue, Apr 8, 2014 at 10:33 AM, martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org <
> martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org> wrote:
> > > In general, I am supportive of this, since any entity could "have" a
> video.
> > >
> > > But of course you can also model it the other way round:
> > >
> > > http://schema.org/VideoObject
> > >  ---> about --> Thing
> > >
> > > This works as of now. The main problem with the current solution is
> that search engines seem to have a hard time honoring information in that
> structure. And since we have the property "image" at the level of
> http://schema.org/Thing, why not promote video thereto, too?
> > >
> > >
> > > Martin
> > >
> > >
> > > On 08 Apr 2014, at 04:11, Jarno van Driel <jarno@quantumspork.nl>
> wrote:
> > >
> > > > When working on markup for a MedicalProcedure I ran into the issue
> of not having the 'video' property available to link an embedded video,
> explaining the MedicalProcedure, to the entity.
> > > >
> > > > But while looking for a solution in the full list of types at
> schema.org I started to wonder, wouldn't the 'video' property be usefull
> on plenty of more types than just CreativeWork. For example a 'video' about
> a person, organization, product, service or MedicalProcedure is quite
> common, yet there's no way to link a video to any of those types.
> > > >
> > > > Of course the workaround for this would be an multi-type entity as
> in "Product CreativeWork" but somehow that just feels wrong. Looking at how
> much embedded video is used, wouldn't it be better if the 'video' property
> moved up the chain and became part of 'Thing'?
> > >
> > >
> >
>
>