interactionType references an Action or a Class?

[KalleOlaviNiemitalo]

At https://schema.org/interactionType, it says the property is expected to have values of type https://schema.org/Action:

  "schema:rangeIncludes": {
    "@id": "schema:Action"
  }

In Example 1 however, the values are URLs like https://schema.org/CommentAction. AFAICT, the type of the https://schema.org/CommentAction item is not https://schema.org/Action; instead it is http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#Class, to which https://schema.org/Class is equivalent:

    {
      "@id": "schema:CommentAction",
      "@type": "rdfs:Class",
      "rdfs:comment": "The act of generating a comment about a subject.",
      "rdfs:label": "CommentAction",
      "rdfs:subClassOf": {
        "@id": "schema:CommunicateAction"
      }
    },

So when Example 1 contains these in microdata and JSON-LD :

        <div itemprop="interactionStatistic" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/InteractionCounter">
            <meta itemprop="interactionType" content="https://schema.org/CommentAction">
            <meta itemprop="userInteractionCount" content="18">
        </div>Showing 1-2 of 18 comments. <a href="foofighters-comments">More</a>
        </div>

        "interactionStatistic": {
            "@type": "InteractionCounter",
            "interactionType": "https://schema.org/CommentAction",
            "userInteractionCount": "18"
        }

shouldn't they instead be:

        <div itemprop="interactionStatistic" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/InteractionCounter">
            <div itemprop="interactionType" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/CommentAction" />
            <meta itemprop="userInteractionCount" content="18">
        </div>Showing 1-2 of 18 comments. <a href="foofighters-comments">More</a>
        </div>

        "interactionStatistic": {
            "@type": "InteractionCounter",
            "interactionType": {
                "@type": "https://schema.org/CommentAction"
            },
            "userInteractionCount": "18"
        }

in order to declare an item with type https://schema.org/CommentAction and use that item as the value of the https://schema.org/interactionType property?

Or else, the https://schema.org/interactionType property should be declared as having type https://schema.org/Class or an enumeration type, rather than an https://schema.org/Action.

[KalleOlaviNiemitalo]

The disagreement on the type of the value of https://schema.org/interactionType was also mentioned in #2858 (comment).

[rrlevering]

This is larger than just interactionType, there are a number of places where class enums are used.

Note that we (Google) recently changed our "coercion" so that we "fix" these class enums automatically. This shows up in the Schema Markup Validator as well. Plug in your first example:

{
  "@context": "http://schema.org",
  "@type": "InteractionCounter",
  "interactionType": "https://schema.org/CommentAction",
  "userInteractionCount": "18"
}

into validator.schema.org and you'll see what I mean. Basically our logic is if the value is valid subclass of the property range, then assume that it's a node type of an empty node.

In my discussions with Dan, he has been less strict on this (Class vs. object) but for our internal consistency of consumption we need them to be the same.

[github-actions]

This issue is being nudged due to inactivity.