RE: Inverse Properties in Microdata:, was Re: schema.org update, v1.8: added WebSite type; broadened isPartOf to relate CreativeWorks

On 5 Aug 2014 at 14:07, Dan Brickley wrote:
> On 4 August 2014 18:41, Markus Lanthaler wrote:
>> May I ask why? I thought the main feature of Microdata was its simplicity.
>> Reverse properties are not exactly the simplest thing as this thread has shown.
>> So why add them to Microdata? Why can't we simply recommend people to 
>> use RDFa for such "advanced" use cases? Do we want to evolve both formats
>> in the future?
>> 
>> Don't get me wrong, I'm not against adding this feature to Microdata at all. I'm
>> just curious to understand the motivation and reasoning behind this effort.
> 
> Imagine you're running a large site, probably with chunks of it built
> by people whose roles and even employer may have changed. Imagine it
> has embedded Microdata throughout, and you're wondering whether to add
> some additional information to match new schema.org vocabulary. For
> people in this situation, throwing in a few more itemprops (and
> reverse-itemprops) is a relatively simple, low risk option. Ripping it
> all out to replace with RDFa (or JSON-LD) is going to be a much more
> expensive and daunting operation.

Yeah, this is very true and a completely valid concern. Too bad Microdata decided to invent its own attribute names :-P


> Hence the desire for a convention on
> top of Microdata to match this (relatively niche and rarely used)
> piece of syntax that RDFa and JSON-LD publishers already have.

This is exactly the thing I me that triggered my question. If it is really "relatively niche and rarely used", do we really want to complicate everyone's live by introducing a new feature to Microdata? Or would it be more sensible to require those "few" who need it to invest a little more effort?


> Schema.org markup is published on millions and millions and millions
> of sites now, almost entirely in Microdata notation. While I have no
> desire to try to mutate Microdata into feature parity with RDFa, this
> is one place where agreeing a syntax-level extension of classic
> Microdata seems to be worthwhile.

Maybe.


--
Markus Lanthaler
@markuslanthaler

Received on Tuesday, 5 August 2014 12:50:54 UTC