Re: Video Game Series (was VideoGame Proposal)

On 16 October 2014 20:53, Aaron Bradley <aaranged@gmail.com> wrote:

> <meta itemprop="seriesType" content="VideoGame">
>
> ... then I think it's potentially problematic.  Anything requiring
> non-visible markup is should be a red flag in schema.org, since the sponsors
> are so endlessly keen to limit this to situations where the declaration
> requires a particular data format for machine consumption, a la dates in
> ISO-8601 format.  What you suggest with the "seriesType" itemprop certainly
> works fabulously, but raises that red flag.

I quite like seriesType, although simply finding a Series and seeing
that it consists of several parts that are all of type VideoGame might
be adequate for many applications, without stating an explicit
Series-level type. There are probably a few mixed-media / format
crossover cases where a series might mix different parts, even if a
Series is most typically composed of the same kinds of thing.

We have occasionally at schema.org discussed exploring a kind of
parameterized type mechanism, possibly even with some syntax
conventions. e.g. https://schema.org/SportsActivityLocation plus
(somehow...) Sport=Bowling, Sport=Golf instead of a custom named
BowlingAlley (or GolfCourse, TennisComplex etc.). This is heading in a
similar direction.

Regarding the sponsor's "endless" preference to avoid non-visible
markup, ... there are a few statements in the schema.org FAQ
discouraging too much hidden markup. But the world evolves, and the
Web of today isn't quite as it was when
http://www.well.com/~doctorow/metacrap.htm was written. I'm sure
you've noticed a few Google products have been experimenting with
using JSON-LD. Whether any broader schema.org and industry consensus
around "non-visible" structured will emerge, I can't predict. Search
engines can serve their users better when they have lots of high
quality structured data - and sometimes different aspects of 'quality'
pull in different directions. Modeling vs publisher/developer
usability vs mischief disincentives like visibility. At this stage I
think the best thing for the VideoGame design discussions is to focus
on getting a reasonably simple but informative model of games. The
seriesType: VideoGame construction is very similar to modeling
patterns used elsewhere across schema.org.

cheers,

Dan

Received on Thursday, 16 October 2014 20:29:05 UTC