Re: Indicating main entity / primaryTopic - proposal to use 'schema.org/about'

"Equally important to fixing this in schema.org would be proper support in
Google..."
+1

As well as making sure the SDTT supports this. 'Cause if folks don't see a
Rich snippet preview when using it, yet do when they don't use the
property, then chances are slim they'll start using it.


2014-08-06 1:48 GMT+02:00 martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org <
martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org>:

> On 05 Aug 2014, at 22:52, Jarno van Driel <jarnovandriel@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > To revive the subject of this thread I have made some markup examples
> (microdata).
> >
> > The first example illustrates what could happen if we add a new property
> like 'mainEntity' as opposed to expanding the range of 'mainContentOfPage'
> to Thing:
> >
> >
> https://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/ChainingLayoutElements#A_CollectionPage_which_has_an_ItemList_as_it.27s_mainEntity_.28down_the_DOM.2C_normal_relation.29_2
> >
> > While the next two examples illustrate, that if the markup is less
> elaborate, explaining the difference when to use mainContentOfPage or
> mainEntity start to become difficult:
> >
> >
> https://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/ChainingLayoutElements#A_CollectionPage_which_has_an_ItemList_as_it.27s_mainContentOfPage_.28down_the_DOM.2C_normal_relation.29
> >
> >
> https://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/ChainingLayoutElements#A_CollectionPage_which_has_an_ItemList_as_it.27s_mainEntity_.28down_the_DOM.2C_normal_relation.29
> >
> > Yet if we expand the range of 'mainContentOfPage' to Thing we could get
> something like this:
> >
> https://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/ChainingLayoutElements#CollectionPage.2C_ItemList.2C_Product
> >
> > Looking at this I think I'd prefer to expand the range of
> 'mainContentOfPage' to Thing as opposed to adding 'mainEntity'. Solely
> because a lot less markup is needed.
> >
> > Any thoughts?
> >
> +1 for expanding the range of 'mainContentOfPage' to Thing.
> Equally important to fixing this in schema.org would be proper support in
> Google, i.e. that the most appropriate Rich Snippet type will be selected
> based in mainContentOfPage despite the presence of other entitites in the
> page.
>
> Martin
>
> >
> >
> >
> > 2014-06-02 21:20 GMT+02:00 Jarno van Driel <jarnovandriel@gmail.com>:
> > Besides the naming of the property I was wondering what to do when the
> main entity isn't a single thing but a collection of things. For example a
> category page (CollectionPage) of an eCommerce site which shows a
> collection of products?
> >
> > In this case there is no main entity unless it's the predicate for a
> Collection entity. (Maybe something as described in the Collection proposal
> - http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/Collection).
> >
> > When I combine the 2 I can imagine marking up something like this:
> >
> > <body vocab="http://schema.org/" typeof="CollectionPage">
> >   <header property="hasPart" typeof="WPHeader">...</header>
> >
> >   <main property="mainEntity" typeof="Collection">
> >     <ul>
> >       <li property="hasPart" typeof="Product">...</li>
> >       <li property="hasPart" typeof="Product">...</li>
> >       ...
> >     </ul>
> >   </main>
> >
> >   <aside property="hasPart" typeof="WPSideBar">...</aside>
> > </body>
> >
> > Or would it be OK to add a property like @mainEntity first and work on
> the collection issue separately?
> >
> > Jarno van Driel
> > Technical & Semantic SEO Consultant
> > 8 Digits - Digital Marketing Technologies
> >
> >
> > 2014-05-21 22:59 GMT+02:00 Jarno van Driel <jarnovandriel@gmail.com>:
> >
> > What I think we want is a property that performs the same role as FOAF's
> 'primaryTopic': it should point to at most one entity/thing. Given
> currently popular terminology we might call it 'mainEntity' as a
> > strawman.
> >
> > Couldn't changing the expected value of @mainContantOfPage to Thing work
> for this?
> >
> > Doing so would actually help a lot of websites. I've lost count how many
> times I've encountered:
> > <div itemprop="mainContentOfPage" itemscope itemtype="
> http://schema.org/Product"> (or Article or Blog).
> >
> > And by expanding the domain of @mainContentOfPage all those websites
> would automagically have valid markup.
> >
> >
> > 2014-05-21 21:22 GMT+02:00 Dan Brickley <danbri@google.com>:
> >
> > On 21 May 2014 19:21, Dan Scott <dan@coffeecode.net> wrote:
> > > On Wed, May 21, 2014 at 02:04:20PM +0200, Jarno van Driel wrote:
> > >>
> > >> I was wondering, can an entity also have multiple @about properties?
> >
> > That's the right question to be asking. And I didn't ask it hard
> > enough yesterday (probably because I wouldn't have liked the answer).
> >
> > The wording http://schema.org/about has currently, "The subject matter
> > of the content." is awkward. The word "the" suggests a single thing is
> > the subject matter, but it is vague enough that you could have several
> > entities via repeated properties together capturing "the subject
> > matter".
> >
> > What I think we want is a property that performs the same role as
> > FOAF's 'primaryTopic': it should point to at most one entity/thing.
> > Given currently popular terminology we might call it 'mainEntity' as a
> > strawman.
> >
> > I was hoping we could get away with refining the interpretation of
> > 'about', but I'm coming around to the view that it has been used in
> > too many diverse ways over the last 3 years for that to work.
> >
> > >> I ask because when chaining multiple entities to a WebPageElement, to
> me
> > >> it
> > >> seems the following is the logical thing to do:
> > >>
> > >> <body itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/WebPage">
> > >>    ...
> > >>    <div itemprop="hasPart" itemscope
> > >> itemtype="http://schema.org/WPSideBar">
> > >>        <div itemprop="about" itemscope
> > >> itemtype="http://schema.org/ContactPoint">...</div>
> > >>        <div itemprop="about" itemscope
> > >> itemtype="http://schema.org/ItemList">...</div>
> > >>    </div>
> > >>    ...
> > >> </body>
> > >>
> > >> Or would @hasPart or @mentions be prefered over @about?
> >
> > I don't think they're great examples of about-ness, except
> > ContactPoint, if the page is indeed about contact info. The
> > stereotypical use for 'about' is a specific person-place-or-thing that
> > the content is 'about'. Sidebars and lists are structural mechanisms;
> > it would be more typical to see Product, Book, Person, Place etc used.
> > However your main point, that 'about' could credibly be repeated given
> > its definition, is quite reasonable.
> >
> > >
> > > I'm not going to offer any advice about whether "hasPart" or "mentions"
> > > might be preferred here, but you can certainly have multiple "about"
> > > properties for a single entity.
> >
> > Yeah. It is tempting to defend a strict reading of the word 'the' and
> > claim it shouldn't _really_ be repeated; but I don't think that's
> > credible.
> >
> > > See the example for http://schema.org/MedicalScholarlyArticle -
> "about"
> > > is used twice, because the article is about a type of drug and
> > > about a type of medical condition.
> >
> > quite :)
> >
> >
> > > The cardinality of schema.org properties appears to be a FAQ dating
> back
> > > to at least 2011 (http://www.w3.org/2011/webschema/track/issues/5); we
> > > should probably add an explicit statement to
> > > http://schema.org/docs/gs.html or http://schema.org/docs/faq.html (or
> > > both) saying that you can, in general, repeat properties in schema.org
> > > entities as necessary.
> >
> > There are a few (e.g. birthDate, deathDate, most boolean-valued
> > properties) that have at most one sensible value. However even those
> > might have several reasonable encodings. And there are some, e.g.
> > iataCode hopefully, for which there should be at most one entity that
> > has any given value for that property. However we've not attempted
> > cataloguing these cases, partly through a concern to avoid making
> > unrealistically brittle and rigid rules that will be ignored...
> >
> > cheers,
> >
> > Dan
> >
> >
> >
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 6 August 2014 16:48:31 UTC