How lean should the item and property endpoints be?

[JeroenDeDauw]

Right now these endpoints (/items/$id) provide a view on the entire item/property document. A lot of information is omitted, though it is still a view on the entire thing. In list form we have

• Collection endpoint (/items): small element summaries
• Element endpoint (/items/$id): view of the entire document
• Sub element endpoints (/items/$id/aliases): partial view of the document

The GitHub API has

• Collection endpoint (/users): small element summaries
• Element endpoint (/users/$id): more elaborate element summary
• Sub element endpoints (/users/$id/followers): partial view of the "document"

Would following the GitHub approach (not having statements and such on the element endpoints) be better, and why? (This depends on the use cases, and it's unclear to me which ones are more important.)

[addshore]

Thinking ahead it might be nice to add another level here
/entities/items/$id etc?
/entities/ then exposes all entity types accessible through the API
Providing more room at the root level for other things

Yes I think the github approach is the way forward

[JeroenDeDauw]

Thinking ahead it might be nice to add another level here
/entities/items/$id etc?

Can you file a dedicated ticket for that?

Yes I think the github approach is the way forward

Can you elaborate on why?

One downside of this approach is that it will be harder to get both labels and statements for an item. Then again, I'm not sure how common that situation is.

Another downside is that it seems more intuitive to have a whole item at /items/$id.

So what justifies the change?