Re: "score" property for Q&A entities

On 16 June 2014 14:31, Dan Scott <dan@coffeecode.net> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 02:04:02PM +0100, Alf Eaton wrote:
>
>> On 16 June 2014 13:57, Dan Scott <dan@coffeecode.net> wrote:
>>
>>  On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 01:35:18PM +0100, Alf Eaton wrote:
>>>
>>>  In a discussion thread on this list a few months ago[1], there was
>>>> suggestion of adding a "score" property to Question/Answer/Comment (Q&A)
>>>> classes, alongside the existing "upvoteCount" and "downvoteCount"
>>>> properties.
>>>>
>>>> As I'm currently marking up Q&A pages that display only a score (and not
>>>> counts of individual upvotes and downvotes) [2], this would be a useful
>>>> property. Did the discussion ever turn into a full proposal?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Alf
>>>>
>>>> [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-vocabs/2014Feb/0088.html
>>>> [2] https://peerj.com/questions/31-what-does-open-access-mean-to-you/
>>>>
>>>>
>>> In the example from peerj, the "score" that is being displayed has
>>> nothing to do with upvotes or downvotes on the particular answer to a
>>> question; it's the number of contributions that the individual offering
>>> that answer has made to the site as a whole (the sum of activity such as
>>> authored articles, edited articles, reviews, answers, questions, and
>>> replies contributed).
>>>
>>> So I think "score" would be misleading if added to
>>> Question/Answer/Comment for this particular example, because it is
>>> attached to the person's account for that service. It seems more
>>> appropriate for a social account property.
>>>
>>
>>
>> The "scores" that I was referring to on the linked page are the numbers
>> between the "thumbs up" and "thumbs down" icons, which are the scores that
>> users have given to each question or answer, calculated as upvoteCount
>> minus downvoteCount. This is the same as is displayed for questions and
>> answers on StackOverflow, for example. I think you were probably looking
>> at
>> the numbers next to the authors of each question/answer, which are
>> something else.
>>
>
> Oh, my apologies. Firefox blocks cross domain webfonts, so the
> thumbs-up/thumbs-down appear as generic unicode boxes on that site and
> obscured what I was supposed to be looking at :/
>

My apologies for that - I'll try to get that fixed. Here's a better
example, on StackOverflow:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1960473/unique-values-in-an-array


> Would there be a significant semantic difference for sites like this in
> just treating the single score "X" as "X" upVotes, always with 0 downVotes?


It does feel like there's a difference, although the score could just be
described as "net upvotes" in this case (in other cases, the score might be
calculated differently).

It partly depends on whether the data consumer is using "upvoteCount" as a
measure of activity: an "upvoteCount" of "2" would imply little activity,
when the item could actually have had 50 upvotes and 48 downvotes. It would
also lead to the possibility of an item having "-10" upvotes, for example.

Is it worth overloading "upvoteCount" to the point where it loses its
meaning, for the sake of not adding another property to the schema?

Alf