TP-inspired News-related improvements phase 2

[danbri]

Relaying from a conversation with Sally and Subbu from the TrustProject.

We looked over their efforts around author/producer info for per-article pages. It seems the majority can be described using existing schema.org, but there are a couple of areas where additional improvements would help.

1. Language(s) that an article author speaks / has competency in.

Desire here is for a fairly simple characterization of basic language ability, e.g. some journalist knows enough to talk to someone or read/write, but not a strong need to distinguish reading-vs-writing-vs-speaking, nor "wants to learn" vs "is learning" vs "solid" vs "expert" vs "native speaker", etc.

Expectation is that a property would take language codes (as strings or Language objects, along lines of http://schema.org/inLanguage which says "Please use one of the language codes from the IETF BCP 47 standard."). Perhaps in future as educational/learning metadata for competencies and skills grows, we might go deeper --- either language specific or more generally.

2. Expertise

There is a desire to characterize the special expertise of an author, implicitly focussing on the expertise that is most pertinent either to the article at hand or the publishing site / organization.

• We noted that the Text-valued "skills" property already existed for JobPosting, and could be generalized.
• We noted that expertise in a topic is subtly but importantly different from skill in it, examples might include neuroscience, nanotechnology, and foreign policy. We can't plausibly recycle "skills" to mean "expertise".
• We noted that unique ID concept codes for such things are attractive in general (e.g. for jobs etc.) but are unlikely to be commonly used in journalistic settings.
• We suggest adding "expertise" and having both it and a tweaked "skills" property also accept the http://schema.org/Specialty (which is currently and perhaps incorrectly listed as an Enumeration).
• We noted a particular use case for indicating local expertise, for example some author might be a "Person" with "expertise" which is a "Specialty" which has an association with a "Place" e.g. Tampa Florida (e.g. sameAs of https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q1059534).
  • We suggest "about" might be a reasonable name to associate the specialty to the place, but that this construction might be a bit over-ambitious.

[thadguidry]

NO to "expertise" as the chosen term. I do not think that is the need at all. @danbri I do not think you are getting a clear picture from them.

The term "expertise" is too closely analogous to "skills" or "skilled".

I understand that News Organizations what to say that an author covers a domain, has an interest in, "cybersecurity" but is not considered "expert" or "skilled" in "cybersecurity". News Organizations WILL use at times outside consultants or experts in a "cybersecurity" field, etc.

I think their need is one of "writesAbout" or "interestedIn", etc.

Let's come up with a better term than "expertise" that covers that need for News Organizations to say that an author writes stories in their interest area, or domain of interest, etc. but is not "skilled" in it.

https://medium.com/@ellekaplan is "skilled" as a Financial Expert and writes about Finances.
http://www.cnn.com/profiles/john-blake is "skilled" in Religion, and has an "interest" in Politics and writes about both.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/daveasiegel is "skilled" in Social Media, and has an "interest" in Comedy.

[danbri]

@thadguidry the intended distinction (which imho is reasonable) is between knowing about something vs being good at doing it. Many scholars also have that characteristic. There is also looming the matter of competency frameworks from the learning/edu metadata scene. This is a stronger claim that "writes about". I might have significant expertise regarding sports or certain sciences without being a practitioner; by contrast I might be interested in or write about things that are really beyond my expertise. Perhaps it depends upon your view of general journalistic practice which pattern best captures news reporting currently.

[thadguidry]

@danbri Call me picky. Very picky. But I strongly feel that word will confuse folks.
I strongly feel you are not using the right word for what you are trying to explain. https://www.google.com/search?q=definition+of+expertise&oq=definition+of+expertise

expertise -
expert skill or knowledge in a particular field.
the skill of an expert.

Again, I feel strongly that the English word "expertise" is too analogous to "skilled". The idea of expertise includes either "skill" or "knowledge" and not just "knowledge".

UPDATE: If the News Organizations want "expertise" .. then they will have to convince me and demonstrate to me a clear difference from "skill". Because in my world, even having tipped my toe in journalism many times, those 2 terms are highly interchangeable.

[danbri]

well, that is why we are here. I floated a strawman to get some opinions. Let's see if others have suggestions too.

[danbri]

Talking with Sally and @subbuvincent at @TheTrustProject --- for the language aspect, I think their usecase would be handled by a "speaksLanguage" property (taking simple Text or more explicitly coded Language as values). More nuanced things (e.g. native speaker, learner etc) could be handled later via subproperties.

(we have a dedicated issue for this somewhere in github but I didn't find it yet...)

[LeezaRodriguez]

Agree that 'expertise' is not the best description. With a Specialty (especially subtype MedicalSpecialty, you are either formally "certified in" , or self-acknowledged "skilled in".

[chaals]

Agreed that 'expertise' is the wrong name for the term - but there is a difference between "practices" and "knowsAbout" (which is my strawman replacement for "expertise"

With regards to langauge, I think you want something like knowsLanguage - speaking, listening, reading and writing are actually very different for a large number of languages and while the first use-case might just want a single property, I expect we will quickly find that there is a need for explicit subproperties to represent each of these capabilities.

For example many people can speak chinese or japanese far better than they can read or write them, and many people can read European languages at a high level, but cannot speak or even understand them spoken.

(My own case is portuguese - it never occurs me to look for a translation of written portuguese since I have no problem reading it, and in general I am happy to give a talk in portuguese because people understand it. But if someone speaks portuguese to me I am unlikely to understand much, and I cannot write more than very basic sentences).

[subbuvincent]

Extending from what @chaals is saying, @danbri: knowsLanguage seems like a good idea for a general property that could have speaksLanguage, readsLanguage and writesLanguage as sub-properties.

knowsLanguage:
|- speaksLanguage: - lang codes
|- readsLanguage: - lang codes
|- writesLanguage: - lang codes

From a type Person's knowsLanguage's perspective, this will allow different end-user orgs and people to be able to use these properties.

For deeper characterization involving language credentials of some kind, native speaker, learner, etc., this might not fit.

[thadguidry]

You missed one :)

signsLanguage: - lang codes

"Although sign languages have emerged naturally in deaf communities alongside or among spoken languages, they are unrelated to spoken languages and have different grammatical structures at their core." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sign_language

ISO 639 Part 3 has them like "Afghan Sign Language" - afg
http://www-01.sil.org/iso639-3/codes.asp

[TheTrustProject]

With "expertise" we aim to identify what a journalist has knowledge about - either through experience in covering that topic or through training, whether academic or some other type. @chaals is going in the right direction but knowsAbout doesn't convey any basic threshold of knowledge.

[chaals]

knowsAbout doesn't convey any basic threshold of knowledge

That's sort of true, but I don't think we have nya mechanism for effectively demanding some particular threshold when people assert that they are "experts" - and short of trying to attach a bunch of CV information or using a framework for verifiable claims, I doubt there is any likelihood we can make something work sufficiently well to be reliable.

So we're left almost at expressing an "interest in" a topic or thing, but that feels as wrong as "expertise". I'm interested in programming theory and automated algorithm optimisation, I knowAbout chinese language and official non-judicial dispute resolution procedures in australia, and I have skill/expertise in Spanish and accessibility...

[vickitardif]

Would "knowledgeArea" or "knowledgeDomain" be a better compromise between "expertise" and "knowsAbout"?

[chaals]

@vholland asked

Would "knowledgeArea" or "knowledgeDomain" be a better compromise between "expertise" and "knowsAbout"?

For my money, I prefer the plain speaking style of "knowsAbout", and it seems clear (to me) in which direction the property goes. But this is getting into then aesthetics of design to a level at which I am not going to argue very hard - those proposals also sound good enough to me, and particularly if there is a sense that more formal language actually makes users happier, then why not...

[vickitardif]

@chaals I have to admit to not caring terribly and being fine with "knowsAbout". I just want to avoid endlessly debating something relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. Lord knows I have added far worse terms than anything suggested here.

[thadguidry]

Couldn't care less either. Except for one little thing... We have http://schema.org/about already. Having a "knowsAbout" does make things a bit easier for relationship handling outside of Schema.org context.