webschema.html
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<title>Semantic Web Interest Group - Web Schemas Task Force</title>
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<p>Nearby: <a href="http://www.w3.org/2011/webschema/track/">issue tracker</a> | <a href="http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas">wiki</a> | <a href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-vocabs/">public-vocabs list</a></p>
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<p>
This is a charter for a taskforce of the <a href="/2001/sw/interest/">W3C Semantic Web Interest Group</a>. The Web Schemas Task Force is devoted to practical issues around data schemas for large-scale use in the public Web.
</p>
<p>The group will use <a href="http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas">W3C's Wiki</a> and the <a href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-vocabs/">public-vocabs list</a>.
For <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat">IRC</a> discussions, <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/schema">#schema</a> is available on irc.<a href="http://freenode.net/">freenode.net</a>,
alongside the existing <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/swig">#swig</a> (<a href="http://chatlogs.planetrdf.com/swig/">logs</a>)
and <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/microformats">#microformats</a> (<a href="http://microformats.org/wiki/irc#Logs">logs</a>) channels. There is also the <a
href="http://microformats.org/wiki/Main_Page">microformats wiki</a> nearby.
</p>
<p>TF chair: R.V.Guha (Google).</p>
<h2>Web Schemas TF</h2>
<p>
The Web is a decentralized, pluralistic system, and the world is too complex for any single, non-extensible or monolithic
schema to fully describe. Web publishers, with limited resources and attention, have recently started publishing simple
factual data embedded in mainstream Web content - e.g. using <a href="http://microformats.org/">Microformats</a> conventions, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDFa">RDFa</a>,
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5">HTML5</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdata_(HTML)">Microdata</a>. For such purposes, simplicity, usability and ease of adoption are critically important. Recent initiatives such as
Facebook's <a href="http://ogp.me/">Open Graph Protocol</a> and Google/Bing/Yahoo!'s <a href="http://schema.org/">Schema.org</a> announcement have emphasised simple, tightly
constrained vocabularies that emphasise ease of adoption over expressiveness. Meanwhile, many Web-based APIs expose similar data using schemas expressed in JSON or XML
(e.g. based on Atom/RSS), with initiatives such as <a href="http://portablecontacts.net/">Portable Contacts</a> and <a href="http://activitystrea.ms/">Activity Streams</a>
often maintaining both XML and JSON encodings.
</p>
<p>
The taskforce's focus is on collaboration around vocabularies (e.g. <a href="http://www.dublin-core.org/">Dublin Core</a> and <a href="http://www.w3.org/2010/02/rdfa/profile/data/">others</a>),
mappings (e.g. see <a href="http://schema.rdfs.org/">schema.rdfs.org</a>, <a href="http://blog.dbpedia.org/2011/09/11/dbpedia-37-released-including-15-localized-editions/">DBpedia</a>, <a href="http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xg-socialweb/2010May/0009.html">OGP</a>), and around syntax-neutral vocabulary design and tooling,
rather than questions of markup. In practice, it is not always easy to make such sharp distinctions, and we anticipate the group may be a useful source of use cases and test cases for nearby activities, such as the W3C's
investigations around <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDFa">RDFa</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdata_(HTML)">Microdata</a>, or the
<a href="http://microformats.org/wiki/microformats-2">Microformats-2 discussions</a>.
</p>
<p>
This taskforce was created from an appreciation of both decentralized, pluralistic vocabulary development and the
benefits of a more tightly coordinated effort. The forum is offered as a place where any project or group can offer some
accountability and dialog around their work and where both industry consortium and loosely-coordinated initiatives of
individuals can take the opportunity to articulate how their efforts relate to each other.
</p>
<p>
Participants are encouraged to use the group to take practical steps towards interoperability amongst diverse schemas,
e.g. through development of mappings, extensions and supporting tools. Those participants who maintain vocabularies in
any format designed for wide-scale public Web use are welcome to also to participate in the group as a 'feedback
channel', including practicalities around syntax, encoding and extensibility (which will be relayed to other W3C groups as appropriate).
</p>
<p>In-scope topics include:</p>
<ul>
<li>use of structured data in mainstream and specialist search engines (both HTML-embedded and in custom feeds)</li>
<li>use of structured data in social networking, microblogging and link-sharing networks</li>
<li>convergence of schemas around common use-cases</li>
<li>documentation of mappings and equivalences between schemas</li>
<li>syntax issues and practicalities, particularly those for use within HTML</li>
<li>announcements of new versions, proposals, datasets and changes</li>
<li>'how do I express this'?' use case discussion</li>
<li>discussion on common idioms that should be understood by mainstream consumers, to avoid markup duplication</li>
<li>tools and techniques (software libraries, test cases, validators etc.) to ease difficulty of adoption or costs of diversity</li>
</ul>
<p>Out of scope topics include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Advocacy of data models or syntaxes without attention to real-world use cases</li>
<li>The use of inference</li>
<li>debate over foundational ontologies</li>
</ul>
<p>
This is a public group, and does not itself produce specifications. Instead, it provides a forum in which creators and maintainers of data schemas (aka vocabularies, ontologies) can engage with each other and with those who publish and consume such data. </p>
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$Id: webschema.html,v 1.22 2011/10/21 13:27:02 danbri Exp $
<br />
<a href="mailto:danbri@danbri.org">Dan Brickley, W3C SWIG chair.</a>
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