Re: "score" property for Q&A entities

On 16 June 2014 15:03, Dan Scott <dan@coffeecode.net> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 02:50:14PM +0100, Alf Eaton wrote:
>
>> 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.
>>
>
> Point taken.
>
>
>  Is it worth overloading "upvoteCount" to the point where it loses its
>> meaning, for the sake of not adding another property to the schema?
>>
>
> My bias is towards conservatism and trying to explore the possibilities
> of using the existing vocabulary before adding yet another property.
>
> The alternative seems to be to follow Martin Hepp's very sensible
> suggestion of using the existing Review / Rating branch of the schema
> vocabulary (with Rating's single ratingValue property) in this instance,
> in which case you would have a very compact review / Review /
> reviewRating / Rating / ratingValue nested set of properties and types
> for the single score for each answer/comment/question. Pretty verbose I
> guess.
>
> Optionally, one could simply expand the domain of ratingValue to include
> Answer/Comment/Question, thereby still avoiding the addition of an
> entirely new property, yet offering the score that you're looking for
> along side the upvoteCount / downvoteCount properties.


A "score" calculated from combined up/down votes does seem conceptually
similar to a "quality" rating. It's more of an AggregateRating than a
singular Rating, though (in which case "upvoteCount" and "downvoteCount"
could be viewed as "positiveRatingCount" and "negativeRatingCount"). It
differs from AggregateRating mostly in that the final score is a sum of all
the votes rather than an average.

I think it still seems different enough from either of the existing
"rating" classes, as currently attached to reviews, that it would be a bit
of a squeeze to re-use them.

Alf