Chatlog 2011-06-08

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<sandro> I'm reusing this wiki to do scribe formatting.  Sorry for the confusion.
<sandro> Guest: Ivan Herman, W3C
<sandro> Guest: Gavin Carothers, TopQuadrant
<sandro> Guest: Kavi Goel, Google
<sandro> Guest: David Recordon, Facebook
<sandro> Guest: Jay Myers, Best Buy
<sandro> Guest: Dan Brickley, VU
<sandro> Guest: Tantek Çelik
<sandro> Guest: Manu (manu-db) Sporny
<sandro> Guest: Giovanni Tummarello, DERI
<sandro> Guest: Thomas (tlr) Roessler, W3C
<sandro> Guest: Kevin (unknownA) Marks
<sandro> Guest: Unknown (unknownB) PersonB
<sandro> Guest: Unknown (unknownE) PersonE
<sandro> Guest: Edward (hober) O'Connor
<sandro> Guest: Ed (edsu) Summers, Library of Congress
<sandro> Guest: Jason Lorenzen, IPTC
<sandro> Guest: Stephen Paul (singpolyma) Weber
<sandro> Guest: Mike (unknownC) Linksvayer, Creative Commons
<sandro> Agenda: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/wiki/SemTech2011BOF
<sandro> scribe: sandro
<sandro> Ivan: Let's go around the room and introduce ourselves.
<sandro> (introductions, too fast to scribe.  Folks from a lot of places.)
<sandro> Ivan: ... I want to find a way that avoid turf war or confrontation, I dont think anyone needs that.   To find an understanding of what is really happening.
<sandro> Ivan: We have two issues.    Independent.
<sandro> Ivan: 1.  Format   RDFa vs Microformats vs Microdata
<sandro> Ivan: 2.  Vocabularies themselves -- not the details, but social process to develop them.  Indep issues.
<sandro> Ivan: On Format -- not having relevant people from google, ... I would like to avoid "my format is better than your format" the various formats have been around for years have their respective roles, adv disavt.
<sandro> Ivan: The quesiton is whether microformats and RDFa will be treated the same as microdata by the search engined, or not.
<sandro> ivan: Some blogs, someone from bing team, what is the situation.
<sandro> Ivan: Who has information about what the role will be of other formats?  Its' one thing what's announcemtn, it's another thing that they do.  Anyone have more information on this.
<sandro> unknownB: microformats has immediate effect on google, green thai curry.   people will use any mechanism that improves their search enging.     I don't care about the formats, per se.   My customers want the data, like they want headlins that are seo friendly.
<sandro> Jay: are we thinking these formats are going to be use for more than search?  I can use RDFa internally?
<sandro> (Kavi arrives.)
<sandro> Jay: If we're looking for more than just search; if I want to do two things at onces....  Person and machine at once.
12:41:12 <tlr> Thomas Roessler, http://www.w3.org/
<sandro> Guest: Aaron (aaronpk) Parecki
12:41:19 <aaronpk> Aaron Parecki http://aaronparecki.com
<sandro> Guest: Lora (laroyo) Aroyo, VU University Amsterdam
12:41:25 <laroyo> Lora Aroyo, VU University Amsterdam, http://lora-aroyo.org
<sandro> Guest: William (vulcan_wsmith) Smith, Vulcan
12:41:32 <vulcan_wsmith> William Smith, http://www.vulcan.com/
<sandro> Guest: Henri (bergie) Bergius, IKS Project
12:41:35 <bergie> my interest in this comes from using structured data to make web pages editable: https://github.com/bergie/VIE#readme
<sandro> Guest: Bart (SimpsonUS) van Leeuwen
12:41:40 <SimpsonUS> Bart van Leeuwen - http://netage.nl - http://data.brandweeraa.nl
12:41:45 <sandro> Sandro Hawke, http://www.w3.org/People/Sandro
12:41:46 <bergie> Henri Bergius, IKS Project 
<sandro> Guest: Andraz (minmax) Tori, Zemanta
12:41:46 <minmax> Andraz Tori - http://www.zemanta.com
<sandro> Guest: Jochen (jocrau) Rau, TYPO3 Core Dev
12:42:17 <jocrau> Jochen Rau, TYPO3 Core Dev (http://typo3.org)
12:42:29 <tantek> please feel free to type notes / minutes here
12:43:16 <tantek> what was the question?
12:43:48 <vulcan_wsmith> Utility of RDFa covering both search and structure in one format
12:44:55 <sandro> Ivan: repeats question for Kavi -- If I make a page in which I use your vocab, from schema.org, but I use microformats or RDFa, will Google/Bing/Yahoo treat that information the same as you treat the microdata?  Or will you ignore it?
12:45:32 <tantek> Thanks sandro
12:45:48 <sandro> Kavi: We don't know for sure.  We've committed to supporting Microdata.  If you use this, you'll get the benefit from the search engine.
12:45:56 <danbri> hi folks
12:46:09 <danbri> (any chance of an audio stream?)
12:46:22 <sandro> kavi: there's no support that's being dropped.   Everything that's been announced for Rich Snippets continues.   The questions is for microformats what will we be able to parse.    It's not so tricky.
12:46:23 <tantek> hi danbri
12:46:30 <hober> danbri: I can facetime you in if you'd like
12:46:34 <tantek> I've asked folks there in person to relay questions etc. here in the channel
12:46:41 <tantek> I'm skyped in via Ivan
12:46:44 <sandro> kavi: When we look at markup, most webmasters (78%) don't get all tjhe markup up to spec.
12:47:29 <sandro> kavi: Being able to provide good tools and feedback, that is quite costly on our side.   So I think the main quesiton is, if there is a continuum here, pure syntax, active outreach, .....     short answer is we dont know, because it depends on the Cost/Benefit.   
12:47:42 <tantek> BTW - when we speak of microformats as a syntax - since the initial microformats are specifically only for particular vocabularies - the proper comparison to look at would be the 1+ year in development microformats 2.0 effort - which focuses on generalizing microformats syntax and making it orthogonal of vocabularies
12:47:45 <sandro> kavi: What does the community of webmaster gain by having these additional options?
12:47:50 <tantek> http://microformats.org/wiki/microformats-2
12:48:04 <tantek> hello manu
12:48:07 <sandro> kavi: We wanted to make life simpler.   If we accept more things, what are the upsides to doing that.
12:48:10 <manu-db> hi tantek :)
12:48:22 <tantek> kavi - life is always simpler in a dictatorship ;)
12:48:44 <manu-db> I've been meaning to e-mail you about this whole schema.org thing... heard you on that live radio broadcast a few days ago and couldn't help but nod my head in agreement.
12:49:05 <tantek> I appreciated your blog post also manu.
12:49:15 <tantek> who is speaking right now?
12:49:25 <sandro> giovanni: The point is this.   All it takes to make everyone in this room, etc, happy is to add ONE LINE to the spec, "We will support this vocab ALSO IN RDFa."   Then everyone can keep doing what they are doing, all the research and the projects.    To support this takes ONE LINE of code, there are existing parsers.   No extra parsers to write.   Add that sentence, and we're done.
12:49:31 <sandro> kavi: It's not one line of code.
12:49:34 <danbri> hey tantek, i didn't see Microformats 2 post, but a big +1 to 'Proposal: simplify all microformats to flat sets of properties.'
12:49:37 <tantek> yeah it's not one line of code
12:49:44 <hober> srsly
12:49:56 <sandro> kavi: My question is really what are the use cases.    "Make everyone on the web happy"?
12:49:58 <tantek> danbri - microformats two has been openly discussed since I first brainstormed it on the wiki May 2010
12:50:13 <sandro> Giovanni: I have a long list of use cases not addressed by schema.org
12:50:22 <tantek> and we held an open session discussing it  / introducing microformats 2.0 at SXSW 2011 in March
12:50:28 <tantek> Giovanni sounds upset
12:50:30 <danbri> i'm sure it has, I'm not complaining! I just missed it
12:50:45 <tantek> danbri - true enough - easy to miss all the awesome open standards work going on
12:50:47 <tantek> :)
12:50:48 <sandro> Giovanni: I don't understand why you announced it like this.  I'm not a partisan, but if we can JUST say RDFa is okay, then everyone is happy.
12:51:01 <sandro> kavi: I am asking for the use cases so we can talk through them
12:51:05 <tantek> Giovanni - RDFa doesn't make everyone happy.
12:51:05 <vulcan_wsmith> Giovanni: Is laying it out there
12:51:09 <tantek> having *choice* makes everyone happy
12:51:11 <danbri> They could say microformats are OK too
12:51:16 <sandro> Giovanni: It's really none of Google's businesses, actually.
12:51:34 <tantek> kavi - we ask for the use cases at microformats.org also
12:51:42 <sandro> Giovanni: You can get into whatever business you want, but let other people have their businesses, too.
12:51:51 <tantek> Kavi, you or Google should not be the arbiter of use-cases
12:52:01 <tantek> that's what open standards communities are for
12:52:04 <tantek> not one company
12:52:07 <tantek> or two companies 
12:52:14 <danbri> it's not for a couple of big companies to decide by fiat, and say in same breath 'but we'll monitor uptake of the specs we've just overshadowed to see if we got it wrong'
12:52:24 <tantek> danbri - agreed
12:52:30 <sandro> unknownA: I don't want to get into syntacitc bickering; it's about the process, where you three sat down and came up with this alone.
12:52:48 <tantek> (wonders what it would take)
12:52:51 <sandro> ivan: repeatinging, there are two issues here: syntax and vocab management.
12:52:54 <danbri> count yourself lucky ;)
12:52:58 <tantek> :)
12:53:00 <sandro> ivan: 10 more minutes on syntax
12:53:27 <danbri> is anyone relaying questions from IRC?
12:53:34 <sandro> unknownA: Microformats says have a discussion first.  You did that with hRecipe, so I'm surprsed to see you didnt go through that here.  That'a the difference in phsilophy
12:54:14 <tantek> Google (Kavi in particular!) successfully worked with the open community on both hReview-aggregate and hRecipe - openly.
12:54:21 <sandro> kavi: This (richsnippets) team has been doing this for 2 years now.  Starting with microformats and RDFa.   We didnt want to pick a winner, force something on the world.   Lots of tradeoffs.     We saw people doing both.  Most of the adoption was microformats.
12:54:28 <tantek> "historically most of the adoption has been microformats" (did I hear that right?)
12:54:33 <hober> tantek: you did
12:54:49 <danbri> Q+ please "Would you agree that the uptight, patent-mentioning terms of service could discourage innovation and creative use of schema.org-formatted data? Can the ToS be relaxed?"
12:54:53 <sandro> kavi: Going and talking with sites, what drove people was How Simple Is This.   And the things we think are at the simplest end of the spectrum, are at the most complex for userrs.
12:55:01 <tantek> How simple?
12:55:09 <tantek> simple for publishers/authors matters more than simple for developers
12:55:45 <tantek> I'm not buying the more confusion over time point - citation required.
12:55:51 <sandro> kavi: We were expecting consolitdation.     Then microdata came up as well, and we did a 3rd version.    There was no consensus being reached over time, both in syntax and vocab.   it was getting worse, not better.   Multiple standards, without support for one, and this looked bad.
12:56:03 <tantek> if anything we *had* started to see some level of convergence at least on vocabularies among open communities
12:56:06 <sandro> kavi: So we asked how we could drive up adoption
12:56:16 <sandro> kavi: So there is the question about what we picked, and the question about the process.
12:56:34 <sandro> kavi: We made a judgement call.    It may not be the call most of the people in this room agreed with.
12:56:37 <tantek> Google picking a winner is not good for the open web.
12:56:44 <bergie> maybe there was a good reason for each three to exist?
12:56:53 <sandro> kavi: In terms of process, we knew a smaller group would be more likely to get it out the door.
12:56:56 <tantek> bergie - we're still exploring this space of technologies
12:57:01 <tantek> all 3 have strengths and weaknesses
12:57:08 <sandro> kavi: (philosophy of markup)
12:57:11 <tantek> and we've been learning from each others innovations
12:57:18 <danbri> amen re strengths/weaknesses
12:57:29 <bergie> tantek: exactly. So Google just pushing a particular format (and the least popular of them!) down everybody's throats is definitely bad
12:57:47 <sandro> kavi: Should we be working with our competitors?     We wanted to simplify things for webmasters.   Markup is hopelessly muddled.   WHATEVER we pick, some people will be upset
12:57:47 <danbri> in some ways microdata is like the awkward offspring of microformats + rdfa designs
12:58:04 <tantek> danbri - I'd disagree with that
12:58:12 <sandro> kavi: The acheivement was to get something out there.  We know it's not perfect.   We can make it better.   We hope this can be a step toward great adoption.
12:58:50 <sandro> David_Recordon: One of the concerns I heard, was if you want to be using schema.org, you can't put RDFa or Microformats in the page.   That stops competition and evolution
12:58:57 <danbri> i remember seeing a tantek review somewhere that was quite admiring of microdata (did  i imagine that?); but it came about thru initially a hixification of an htmlized RDFa -- until rdfa folk objected to use of the name for such a creature, and it got renamed Microdata
12:59:17 <sandro> kavi: That was not the intent -- I hope that's changed.  We were just trying to be pragmatic.
12:59:23 <sandro> unknownA: You should have known better
12:59:26 <tantek> Kavi, first, Google should not be picking syntax winners (which was the philosophy in the initial Rich Snippets releases). Second, what is the scientific basis for picking the *least* adopted of the syntaxes? Looks completely unreasonable (scientifically) without presenting data to the contrary.
12:59:32 <sandro> kavi: That was an honest mistake, we'll fix that.
13:00:14 <hober> see also http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23schema (thanks for the live-tweeting, kevin)
13:00:45 <sandro> ivan: Kavi, you know a guy in ireland made a mirror page with an RDF version of the schema vocabs, with all the examples in RDFa 1.1 (soon, at least) --- Is it so that we (all of us) can tell the world that these alternative syntaxes work -- if you choose to use RDFa, then that's okay -- because the search engines will treat it the same?
13:00:51 <sandro> kavi: I guess this is a repeat
13:01:20 <danbri> (he's talking about http://schema.rdfs.org ) 
13:01:26 <sandro> kavi: THere is an underlying addumption that with RDFa you can do a lot of cool things, but with microdata and microformats you can't and we're closing the door to future innovations.     I don't agree with that premise
13:01:40 <manu-db> Could someone ask Kavi: Do you plan on putting support into the Rich Snippets Testing Tool to display schema.org markup if it's expressed in RDFa?
13:02:13 <tantek> manu - have you had a chance to look at microformats 2.0 syntax? http://microformats.org/wiki/microformats-2
13:02:21 <tantek> I would be interested in your feedback
13:02:27 <manu-db> tantek - no, but we should really talk about that as well
13:02:40 <sandro> kavi: When we made this announcement, as three competitors, we couldn't talk about all the things we imagined doing with this data.  But we all understand there is more that can be done.    If you don't have something to ground the design tradeoffs, then it seems like we have subsumed the semantic web.   We're trying to say this is just one thing we accept.
13:03:01 <tantek> manu - in short, many (most?) of the issues you encountered in developing hAudio have driven the design of microformats 2.0.
13:03:09 <manu-db> tantek - I've been trying to figure out ways to pull the Microformats and RDFa community closer together (it's the whole reason I joined the RDFa group in the first place - to bring both communities closer together)
13:03:27 <sandro> kavi: So now we get the opposite flak, "how can you have such small scope".    This standard, like others, will have to evolve.  People wont follow the spec at scale.   All of these thigns will have to change as we get to 100K sites instead of 100.
13:03:31 <manu-db> tantek - great to hear - I've put it on my reading list, I will review and get back to you.
13:03:34 <sandro> kavi: (something about html)
13:03:41 <tantek> manu - one key aspect is to separate syntax from vocabulary
13:03:46 <sandro> kavi: Something is better than nothing.     It's going to have to change.
13:03:48 <tantek> with microformats 2.0 we achieve that
13:04:18 <tantek> kavi, those all sound like rationalizations for ignoring/subsuming open standards community work
13:04:19 <manu-db> tantek - separate syntax from vocabulary - +1000 (I've always believed that Microformats community should focus on vocabs, not syntax)
13:04:22 <sandro> kavi: There is room for many opinions.    This is a step on a long path.   It's not meant to be a be-all end-all, in terms of either syntax or vocab.
13:04:26 <sandro> a question: next steps?
13:04:38 <tantek> manu - I think there is still benefit to pursuing microformats-like syntax, hence microformats 2.0
13:04:43 <sandro> kavi: 1.  collecting feedback and bug fixes.   lots of stuff is coming in.
13:04:57 <tantek> manu but by separating that discussion from vocabulary, we can work on vocabulary as well
13:05:14 <tantek> kavi - why is it ok to put Google at the middle of this? Google is not W3C. Google is not IETF.
13:05:15 <sandro> kavi: 2.  due to alienation, some disccusions were not happening.   we're planning to reach out and have conversations.
13:05:26 <manu-db> tantek - yes, I agree... I care less about working on Syntax in uF community, more about working on vocabs in uF community.
13:05:39 <sandro> kavi: Some of the anger and frustrations I've seen:  "why did you go create this new thing, when there's this other thing"
13:05:50 <tantek> manu - that's totally fine - I want to make it so that anyone can work on vocabulary in the microformats community *independent* of syntax
13:06:00 <sandro> kavi: We didn't try to re-invent at all, we just polished a bit.   Obviously we didnt get it all right.
13:06:02 <manu-db> tantek - and I think that's a brilliant move.
13:06:34 <tantek> kavi's point of "[we're] collecting feedback and bug fixes.  lots of stuff is coming in." indicates an implicit acceptance/value as Google at the middle of this.
13:06:41 <tantek> and that's the biggest problem I have with schema.org
13:06:56 <tantek> it's a subversion of all the open standards community work that *all* of us have done for years
13:07:02 <tantek> including tons of people *at Google*
13:07:07 <danbri> tantek - has anyone got a prototype microformats2 generic parser?
13:07:08 <sandro> gavin: ORA did some early ?data on the web.   I've never really felt what the problem with RDFa was.    What caused the creation of microdata in the first place?   It felt like the RDFa WG addressed the problems, and then we still had microdata.
13:07:11 <tantek> people like Chris Messina on ActivityStrea.ms
13:07:20 <manu-db> I think that schema.org should be moved to Microformats 2 community (vocab part) or W3C (or both)
13:07:21 <tantek> and Joseph Smarr on PortableContacts.net
13:07:35 <tantek> danbri - working on it (generic microformats 2.0 parser)
13:07:53 <tantek> to produce both JSON and RDF triples (hopefully a bit cleaner than what microdata produces ;) )
13:08:01 <sandro> gavin: As a member of the HTML5 WG, I couldn't see the line.    Inside google, was there a discussion when this was created?   It's been hard to figure out which to use.   But now it looks like Google is saying "use microdata".   How did Google decide.
13:08:19 <sandro> kavi: There is no single or right answer to this question.  
13:08:29 <tantek> manu - regarding moving schema.org - from a technical perspective I'm taking schema.org as brainstorming proposals
13:08:33 <sandro> kavi: Certainly we could dive into the syntactic details.
13:08:33 <minmax> tantek, it is.. but as a web developer, I have to say... finally ... sorry, w3c was neglecting web developers with rdfa for last X years... 
13:08:45 <tantek> and working to see where it is possible to integrate the brainstorm proposals into various works in progress at microformats.org
13:09:02 <sandro> gavin: As a developer, until schema.org, it felt like two things doing the same thing, and no obvious reason to use one and not the other.    And now there is schema.org.
13:09:03 <tantek> danbri - excellent - will do !
13:09:41 <sandro> unknownB: You keep saying you could argue about usage, but no one is using microdata, and it does less than RDFa, and it's no simpler than RDFa 1.1, "but you could argue that it's the way to go".
13:09:59 <manu-db> minmax: How was RDFa WG ignoring web developers? We listened to every piece of input we got - primarily because we care about how web developers use this stuff, but also because we're required to!
13:10:10 <tantek> if this were the 1990s and Microsoft and Netscape had announced they'd developed the next version of HTML for all of us HTML-MN and dictated it - everyone would have flipped out
13:10:15 <sandro> kavi: Instead of just comparing microdata and RDFa and metatags in the head
13:10:23 <sandro> recordon: That's just RDFa
13:10:26 <tantek> but somehow in the 2010s and it's Google and Microsoft (+ Yahoo Search puppet) and they've developed the next version of semantics for the web and dictated it and people ARENT flipping out?!?
13:10:31 <sandro> kavi: I dont want to get into that
13:10:53 <minmax> manu-db, ... web developers _do_not_care_ about RDF... it's the wrong starting point... 
13:11:32 <sandro> kavi: There has been relatively small adoption of RDFa or microdata, on the sites we crawl.  The BROAD level theme is that the difference in adoption were not what mattered, but it had to be simple and cover just the use cases we wanted to adopt right away.
13:11:42 <tantek> minmax - more adoption of RDFa than microdata on the web would indicate that web developers cared *even less* about microdata than RDFa.
13:11:44 <manu-db> minmax: That is a broad, generalized statement - I'm a web developer and I care about RDF. There are many people out there that don't care, there are many that do care. The great thing about the Web is that we're all given a choice to care about what we want to care about.
13:11:51 <sandro> ivan: I don't think the discussion of which is better fits here
13:12:11 <sandro> unknownB: Where do we go from here?   cf Peter Mika's study. 
13:12:14 <minmax> manu-db, I am just trying to defend the point from an entirely other perspective
13:12:35 <tantek> minmax - do you have comparable data for your perspective or is it anecdotal?
13:12:37 <edsu> manu-db: so using that logic, it's ok for google to care about microdata too?
13:12:38 <sandro> Ivan: Kavi you're not giving me a yes or a know.    Will you allow RDFa and Microformats to live as equal formats for a few years at least?
13:12:38 <minmax> manu-db, and I agree it is overgeneralziation
13:12:50 <minmax> tantek, anecdotal...
13:13:29 <minmax> tantek, W3C failed to serve web developers with both RDF and RDFa... RDF was hijacked by enterprise market... so pushing it to web is not what web developers care about
13:13:30 <manu-db> minmax: That's fine, but your perspective sounds exclusionary to a bunch of people that care about Web development /and/ Graph-based data representations.
13:13:30 <sandro> kavi: The goal of schema.org was to reduce the confusion of having several standards that were equal citizens.        We *were* letting them play out.
13:13:44 <minmax> manu-db, yeah, sorry, I take that back
13:13:52 <sandro> kavi: whether OGP is RDFa is going in circles
13:14:30 <tantek> folks - here's the data that Google published last time they presented this at *last year's SemTech*
13:14:31 <tantek> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_semantic_web_push_rich_snippets_usage_grow.php
13:14:36 <manu-db> edsu: Yes, perfectly fine for Google to care about Microdata - they should care! However, they should also care about RDFa and anything else Web developers *choose* to use.
13:14:39 <sandro> kavi: Within google we have people on all sides of these issues.   I can say on behalf of Search Quality, that we did not and do not have a horse in this game.   It is only a question of what will drive adoption the best.   We may have made the wrong decision.
13:14:51 <sandro> kavi: This was our motivation.
13:14:54 <tantek> kavi, where's the updated data now?
13:15:13 <danbri>  question: can we identify a common data model across microdata, microformats2 and rdfa such that we can share and mix vocabs across them?
13:15:17 <tantek> why not present updated data instead?
13:15:31 <manu-db> +1 to Danbri's question - make sure it's asked in person.
13:15:32 <sandro> kavi: Could we support more than one format, even if we're documenting just one?  That could be a reasonable option.  I tried to outline the factors we'd care about that.   What kinds of things would it enable?
13:15:42 <danbri> (roughly something that smells a bit like rdf without some of the real-or-perceived clutter)
13:15:52 <tantek> danbri - that would likely result in trees of objects of property value pairs that get turned into simple triples just for the sake of RDF
13:15:53 <danbri> (ie. attribute/value pairs attached to web-identified thingies)
13:16:18 <tantek> basically, the common data model is hierarchies of objects, not triples
13:16:22 <danbri> the triple view isn't mandatory
13:16:24 <danbri> yeah
13:16:28 <sandro> ivan: Working through that line would be a way forward.     W3C is a player on both formats, and would like the discussion to go on.   How can these formats live and find the right messaging, okay for Google...    blog items like "you bet on the wrong horse" should not happen.
13:16:38 <manu-db> danbri, tantek: Something like JSON-LD? http://json-ld.org/
13:16:47 <edsu> danbri: pasting some microdata/html into http://foolip.org/microdatajs/live/ suggests yes :)
13:16:52 <manu-db> (we can even make it look exactly like JSON)
13:17:04 <danbri> the rdfism leaks in when we ask whether type definitions get to have the last say about properties that can occur on that type
13:17:17 <danbri> yeah i was talking to foolip earlier :) great stuff
13:17:21 <tantek> folks, it's wrong for Google (or Google+Microsoft) to dictate vocabularies, let's not lose sight of that
13:17:24 <welty> what is the "perceived clutter" - has anyone characterized that?
13:17:32 <welty> is it just URIs?
13:17:48 <tantek> just like we wouldn't have accepted Netscape+Microsoft dictating HTML-NSMS
13:17:48 <sandro> unknownC: I wanted to raise the formats issue a different way.  the relationships of shcema.org and the formats and to extraction.  it seems like schema.org has changed microdata a lot, like adding schema defintion, which microdata didnt have before.  DO you expect microdata forlks to use that  new schema language (which is a lot like RDFS).
13:18:27 <sandro> unknownC: itemid in html5 vs schema.org ulr property.    So the algo in html5 spec gives you a URL literal property, not the subject you might expect.
13:18:43 <tantek> unfortunately in the search space, Google and Microsoft are essentially potential bullies - and the release of schema.org is a bullying of open vocabulary efforts.
<sandro> Guest: Sophia P
13:19:05 <sophiap> welty, I would like the structure to be flatter, less hierarchy
13:19:25 <tantek> welty - yes - that's been our experience with microformats too - flatter, less hierarchy works better
13:19:39 <sandro> kavi: We didnt actually document everything in microdata.    In trying to be simple, ... if we could use fewer new attrs, (itemref, itemid, ...  maybe those shouldnt have been left out?)    In terms of inventing new things, to the best of my memory, we didnt actually change the syntax, but we organized things in a hierarchy
13:19:51 <danbri> tantek - do you have specific areas in mind where you think they might bias the vocab?
13:19:51 <tantek> frankly I was quite surprised by the hierarchy of schema.org - smelled very 1990s object hierarchy like - like lessons learned since (on the Web) were ignored by the schema.org "experts"
13:19:53 <welty> the clutter associated with RDF (danbri's term)
13:19:58 <minmax> tantek, as a web developer I have to say... finally, :) 
13:19:58 <sandro> kavi: We've been careful not to reuse property names across types, to give us flexibility.
13:20:03 <welty> RDF is as flat as you want
13:20:22 <tantek> danbri - to put it bluntly, the "experts" that produced the schema.org vocabularies made so many "noob" mistakes that I can't take them seriously
13:20:23 <sandro> (unknownC is mike l)
13:20:24 <danbri> (the only obvious screwup i could find was spouse being defined as singular; hardly inclusive)
13:20:26 <minmax> RDF was largely hijacked by companies serving enterprise market... 
13:20:26 <tantek> they're about 20 years out of date
13:20:41 <tantek> danbri - *tons* of mistakes in there - you weren't looking hard enough ;)
13:21:02 <tantek> the whole class hierarchy approach is 1990s java-think
13:21:04 <tantek> it's obsolete
13:21:08 <tantek> we know better now
13:21:12 <tantek> with *web-scale* markup requirements
13:21:34 <manu-db> danbri - yes, lots of issues in schema.org vocab - things that Microformats/RDFa community would've picked up on very quickly.
13:21:35 <danbri> ( the '90s heritage it cites is http://www.cyc.com/opencyc )
13:21:41 <sandro> ivan: From a w3c process point of view, but microdata and rdf1.1 are both still working drafts.     the portions about the mapping to RDF have bugs reported -- in the WG they have to be settled.  I don't think Google will have a problem with that.   Neither of these documents is yet a standard.
13:22:11 <manu-db> Can somebody ask Kavi if Google or Microsoft plans to take part in either the Microdata or RDFa standardization work
13:22:23 <manu-db> We would love to have them on board in the RDFa Working Group
13:22:39 <sandro> ivan: Schema.org is out there, ... how do you envisage the process for the future whereby schema.org might be a place where new vocabs are developed.   I place to make it a more open social process?    Might be at w3c or not, but I'm curious about the process.
13:22:41 <tantek> Ivan - no it is unacceptable for Google+Microsoft to hijack open vocabulary development
13:22:45 <tantek> bullying should not be rewarded
13:23:12 <sandro> kavi: I don't have a great answer right now.    I dont think any one company wants to own this in its entirety.   By going with 3, we showed we weren't just doing it.
13:23:24 <tantek> "anyone can continue to develop vocabularies" - Kavi (did I hear that right?)
13:23:33 <manu-db> That's not a very re-assuring answer, Kavi.
13:23:39 <danbri> "anyone can continue to develop legacy vocabularies"
13:23:41 <sandro> kavi: (1) Any one CAN continue to develop vocabs.   We might adopt them, maybe with the same syntax, maybe different syntax.
13:23:47 <tantek> danbri - microformats.org *is* very wikipedia-like (with process etc.) for vocabularies
13:23:53 <tantek> that's the point of microformats.org/wiki/process
13:23:56 <sandro> kavi: (2) (missed)
13:24:15 <danbri> yup, but wikipedia is wikipedia-scale ... can we (at some point) just cut over to use that?
13:24:31 <sandro> kavi: Then it leaves the question of where is the completely open discussion...   We don't have an answer yet, but this is important.  We'll need to sort out the stuff that's out there.
13:24:39 <tantek> danbri - no because wikipedia processes are for content, not vocabularies
13:24:50 <tantek> wikipedia processes are not scientific enough to actually do vocabulary development
13:24:58 <manu-db> The primary issue with all of this is: If the goal was to speed adoption, it's going to have the opposite effect. This announcement has created a great deal of confusion and uncertainty in the market.
13:25:01 <tantek> plus, microformats.org has a better license - Public Domain / CC0
13:25:06 <tantek> for standards
13:25:13 <manu-db> It affects every one of us - Microformats, Microdata, /and/ RDFa.
13:25:30 <tantek> danbri - it's not and can't, the CC-SA / GNU license makes it infeasable long term
13:25:31 <sandro> unknownA: Ours has an edit button, yours has a feedback button.     The CORE of microformats is we reach agreement.   YOU said "we did it in a closed room".  You havent shown your work, your evidence, how others can get involved.   This is the most worrying thing.
13:25:43 <edsu> manu-db: the omission of facebook at their table suggests to me that might've been part of the intent
13:25:55 <hober> sandro: s/unknownA/KevinMarks/
13:25:59 <sandro> kavi: That's a totally valid point.   Microformats did a great job creating an open community.
13:26:13 <sandro> kavi: There's no good answer for why we didn't do that.
13:26:29 <tantek> good to hear that admission
13:26:42 <sandro> kavi: Coming to microformats with a whole bunch of new things could have been an option.  We did want to get something out there.
13:26:46 <tantek> at microformats we publicly document our research *while* doing development
13:27:00 <tantek> we've learned those lessons!
13:27:10 <danbri> is anyone from bing there?
13:27:16 <tantek> I don't think so
13:27:27 <manu-db> Nobody from Yahoo, either?
13:27:27 <sandro> kavi: The comment about "be big to be part of this", we that reaching consensus is generally very slow.    We started with orgs that had deep vested interests, so we could reach consensus and get something out there.
13:27:36 <tantek> reaching oligopolic consensus is insufficient
13:27:45 <tantek> that completely goes against the *open web*
13:27:53 <sandro> unknownA: It's easy if you define consensus as after excluding 90% of the people who care about it.
13:27:56 <tantek> please someone call bullshit on Kavi's consensus among companies line
13:28:01 <sandro> kavi: That's a valid criticism.
13:28:19 <manu-db> I agree - it may be fine for a first cut, but then you let the community review and give feedback (at the very least)
13:28:24 <laroyo> manu-db peter mika� is here from Yahoo!
13:28:30 <tantek> manu - I disagree
13:28:35 <tantek> it's not even a good first cut
13:28:38 <tantek> no documentation of research
13:28:39 <welty> there are no rules here - you do what works
13:28:40 <tantek> no use-cases
13:28:42 <tantek> nothing
13:28:44 <manu-db> tantek - I didn't say /good/ first cut
13:28:45 <sandro> Jason_Lorenzen: re "being big enough" and "developing in a box".   IPTC did reach out to them, and they did listen.     in the news article area.    they're not THAT evil, just talk to them.  :-)
13:28:52 <tantek> just a schema hierarachy from on high
13:28:58 <sandro> Jason_Lorenzen: which is not to say I'm in favor of it.
13:29:02 <danbri> 'SEO' is not a use case? :)
13:29:11 <tantek> danbri - SEO is a source of spam
13:29:12 <sandro> unknownA: hRecipe was a great example of how Google can do this.
13:29:34 <tantek> "I think the microformats process is a great one." - Kavi (did I hear that correctly? -t)
13:29:36 <vulcan_wsmith> SEO = Direct Commercial Interest with the power to override every other use case
13:29:52 <sandro> kavi: The microformats process is a great one.  Getting the details to scale is an open question.    Microformats hasnt had tons of new formats recently.   Maybe there has to be the proper social mechanisms.
13:29:58 <sandro> unknownA: microformats2
13:29:58 <vulcan_wsmith> which is a problem, but I don't know if it's google's problem
13:30:09 <tantek> doing good formats / vocabularies is *hard* folks
13:30:25 <tantek> most never get past the "do some research" phase
13:30:49 <sandro> andra: I heard people say 90% of the people are ignored.   the point is not the people in this room.    the process leading to RDFa didn't include all those voices either.
13:31:01 <sandro> andra: Think about what will bring the most value to those people, not in this room.
13:31:32 <danbri> tantek, where is the 'cut' line between vocabs that ought to be done at microformats.org, versus 'domain specific' vocabs done off in separate fora? (lifescience stuff? music ontology?)
13:31:49 <danbri> (not meant argumentatively; it seems a genuinely tricky thing to find balance)
13:31:50 <sandro> gavin: I think it's UNBELIEVABLE that Bing, Yahoo, and Google have now finally said that semantics in the document help!       The fact that we're having this conversation is a good thing.   I want to thank you for coming.
13:31:55 <sandro> (applause)
13:31:56 <tantek> danbri - there is no such cut
13:32:05 <sandro> giov: Why didnt facebook join in
13:32:08 <tantek> anyone is welcome to start and do research, publicly with public licenses at microformats.org
13:32:15 <sandro> kavi: We invited them.
13:32:17 <singpolyma> microformats hasn't had a lot of new formats because new formats are not the goal, good ones are :P
13:32:34 <sandro> recordon: We dont understand the value in yet another thing new, here.
13:32:40 <manu-db> andr, what do you mean "RDFa didn't include all those voices"? Open standards process - open issue tracker - yes, people complained, we made changes for many of those complaints - couldn't for others.
13:32:58 <manu-db> andr, to say that people couldn't comment is misrepresenting how the standards process works.
13:33:09 <sandro> kavi: How we make things more simple...     We simplified in ways, but made things more complex in having more things you can mark up.
13:33:37 <sandro> kavi: Even if everyone agrees, there's going to be a long tail not adopting this.
13:33:52 <tantek> to be blunt it doesn't sound like we made much progress in this BOF
13:34:01 <manu-db> Did Kavi say that they asked Facebook to join and Facebook didn't join?
13:34:06 <bergie> yes
13:34:07 <tlr> yes
13:34:16 <sandro> ivan: People are gathering to use this room for the next sessions.   Where do we go from here?  Kavi, you can tell there are unhappy people....   Nobody wants unhappy people.
13:34:21 <tantek> the arrogance of Google+Microsoft taking a top-down vocabulary approach for the rest of the web is NOT acceptable
13:34:25 <manu-db> Did he elaborate on why?
13:34:38 <bergie> tantek: +1
13:34:43 <welty> tantek: -1
13:34:44 <danbri> is this channel logged?
13:34:46 <welty> lighten up
13:34:49 <manu-db> Nevermind, seeing David Recordon elaborating - didn't see value in yet another new thing.
13:34:54 <tantek> "contact me" is insufficient
13:35:01 <tantek> Kavi - bring your research to microformats.org
13:35:06 <bergie> manu-db: FB said they didn't see reason for yet another format that doesn't make anything easier
13:35:07 <tantek> and contribute it to the public domain / CC0
13:35:07 <sandro> kavi: That's the right question.   It's not about who is happy, but offering something constructive.    Anyeone in this room can contact me.   
13:35:08 <manu-db> welty - Tantek makes a very valid point.
13:35:15 <welty> which point?
13:35:24 <tantek> No - moving the discussion to Google is WRONG
13:35:28 <sandro> kavi: there is a dicussion group at google, linked from schema.org
13:35:33 <tlr> +1 to tantek
13:35:37 <manu-db> That this way of doing "standards development" is not how we do things on the *Open Web*
13:35:48 <tantek> manu-db +1
13:36:00 <tantek> Hey Kavi - do you see what you've done here?
13:36:01 <welty> the point of the open web
13:36:04 <sandro> unknownE: we'll talk about this more at the Rich Snippets session
13:36:06 <welty> is that anyone can do anything
13:36:12 <welty> and whatever works, wins
13:36:15 <sandro> tantek, Kavi hasn't been able to look at IRC, no.
13:36:17 <manu-db> part of that is the freedom to chose
13:36:20 <tantek> You've gotten a community leader of microformats.org (myself) and chair of W3C RDFa WG to *agree*
13:36:20 <sandro> DONE
13:36:27 <manu-db> without having stuff dictated to us by a few
13:36:36 <sandro> (ADJOURNED)
13:36:44 <edsu> tantek: see, that's progress :)
13:36:51 <danbri> :)
13:36:58 <manu-db> Yes - both RDFa and Microformats communities agree - sky will be falling, next.
13:37:04 <welty> thanks sandro
13:37:06 <welty> ttly
13:37:17 <manu-db> (shouldn't say 'communities'... at least Tantek and I agree)
13:37:24 <danbri> tantek, we should talk more :) i'll check out the mf 2 stuff
13:37:39 <danbri> it looks like we have beginnings of an idea for a common data model too
13:37:45 <manu-db> tantek - I'd like to follow up with you, Kevin Marks and Chris Messina at some point.
13:37:56 <danbri> one that rdf people can see as triples, and others see as groups of attribute/value pairs ...?
13:37:56 <tantek> manu - let's keep blogging
13:38:11 <tantek> tantek is now offline from Skype
13:38:15 <manu-db> Have two in the pipe now
13:38:15 <danbri> +1 for public conversations rather than 'follow up withs'