Re: Better description for 'keywords' property

On 20 May 2014 15:45, Stéphane Corlosquet <scorlosquet@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 10:39 AM, Markus Lanthaler
> <markus.lanthaler@gmx.net> wrote:
>>
>> On Tuesday, May 20, 2014 4:00 PM, Dan Scott wrote:
>> > On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 02:17:12PM +0100, Dan Brickley wrote:
>> > >On 17 May 2014 06:31, Stéphane Corlosquet <scorlosquet@gmail.com>
>> > > wrote:
>> > >> From previous conversations on this list, it looks like
>> > >> http://schema.org/keywords is meant to hold a list of comma-separated
>> > >> keywords, like the RDFa on this page:
>> > >> http://arc.lib.montana.edu/msu-photos/item/286:
>> > >>
>> > >> <span property="keywords">john burke, msc, football, team</span>
>> > >>
>> > >> If this is correct, the description for this property, which
>> > >> currently
>> reads
>> > >> "The keywords/tags used to describe this content", could be a bit
>> > >> more
>> > >> detailled. I suggest:
>> > >>
>> > >> A comma-separated list of keywords/tags used to describe this
>> > >> content.
>> > >
>> > >This sounds reasonable to me. The only objections I can think of
>> > >involve trying to stretch this property too far, e.g. phrases that
>> > >contain commas within them. Let's keep it simple...
>> > >
>> > >Does anyone here think that this change would not be an improvement?
>>
>> I was just wondering why there doesn't exist a singular version of
>> "keywords", i.e., "keyword". Was that somehow forgotten when all plurals
>> were deprecated or was this a deliberate decision?
>
>
> I had the same reaction as you at first when I discovered this, but
> 'keywords' was kept plural for that very reason, because it's one string
> containing a list of comma-separated keywords. I was surprised initially but
> apparently there are system/folks who prefer to use that as a opposed to
> breaking down the list into individual properties.

Using a 'keywords' meta tag has been around since the 1990s, e.g. see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_element#The_keywords_attribute

It was heavily misused, and is widely treated with suspicion e.g.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

Nevertheless there are uses for it, and it has been in schema.org for
years, so let's make sure it has a decent definition.

I like Dan's softened definition, which seems reasonable since
thousands of sites are using already it, and saw only the original
definition that didn't mention commas.

"Keywords or tags used to describe this content. Multiple entries in a
keywords list are typically delimited by commas."

Dan

Received on Tuesday, 20 May 2014 14:53:35 UTC