Re: Proposed new Schema.org type for poetry and fiction

Hi,

On Fri, Mar 20, 2015 at 7:01 AM, Paul Watson <
lazarus@lazaruscorporation.co.uk> wrote:

>  On 19/03/15 08:52, Anke Wehner wrote:
>
>
>
> On 19 March 2015 at 09:01, Paul Watson <lazarus@lazaruscorporation.co.uk>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi
>>
>> I am thinking about proposing a new schema.org type for poetry, fiction,
>> and other types of creative writing, as a subType of schema.org/Article,
>> perhaps with an additional property that can be used to classify what type
>> of creative writing it is (e.g. poem, haiku, sonnet, short story, fan
>> fiction, etc.).
>>
>
>  Having ways to categorise creative writing would be a good thing, but I
> don't think defining them as subtype of Article makes sense semantically. A
> poem, novel or movie script is not an article.
>
>  How about creating CreativeWork > WrittenWork, moving wordCount,
> pageEnd, pageStart and pagination from Article there, and making Article
> and CreativeWriting subtypes of WrittenWork?
>
>  Regards,
>    Anke
>
>
> I went for the least disruptive change rather than the most semantically
> correct one, but if people are happy to create WrittenWork and shift
> Article to be it's subtype then I'd be happy with that.
>
> So, the suggestion as it stands is to create a new type of WrittenWork  as
> a subtype of Article; move wordCount, pageEnd, pageStart and pagination
> from Article to it's new parent WrittenWork, then create a new subtype of
> WrittenWork called CreativeWriting, with at least one new property
> (currently unnamed) that can be used to classify what type of creative
> writing it is (e.g. poem, haiku, sonnet, short story, fan fiction, etc.).
> Or should we take the opportunity to create some subtypes of
> CreativeWriting while we're doing this (e.g. Poem, Story, Script, etc.)
> instead of using a new property of CreativeWriting to classify the type?
>

These seem like (bibliographic) questions I would like to involve the
SchemaBibEx CG [1] in. There is a dedicated mailing list [2] where we could
go into depth on this, unless all feel comfortable hashing out the options
here. (I did not CC the schemabibex group in this reply.)

My spontaneous reaction is that there may be some need for a subtype for
textual works. But I am wary about making it vaguely limited to "creative"
forms (if "creative" here implies excluding non-fiction, academic essays
and such). Anke's basic WrittenWork might be enough. The specific nature of
the text can probably be given using http://schema.org/genre (provided a
resolution to schema issue 346 [3]) in combination with external
enumerations? (See e.g. "genre in literature" on wikipedia [4] for the
motivation to use genre.) Compare that to the newly introduced property
http://schema.org/artform, which (as I previously suggested) might be
extended to include other forms of expression. (To me, it bears a
resemblance to genre, perhaps even being a subproperty thereof.)

In any case, the multitude of nature-specific subclasses of WrittenText can
explode just as with specific kinds of VisualArtwork (which was the
motivation for introducing artwork as opposed to using multiple types
directly). I'd really like experienced library folks to chime in, and that
we avoid the introduction of anything overly specific here.

Cheers,
Niklas

[1]: https://www.w3.org/community/schemabibex/
[2]: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-schemabibex/
[3]: https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/issues/346
[4]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genre#Literature



> Paul
>