historical-data microdata schema

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Bob Coret

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Aug 1, 2012, 9:48:03 AM8/1/12
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Does anyone know the status of the historical-data schema http://historical-data.org/ ? 
The weblog about this scheme seems somewhat inactive: http://historical-data-schema.blogspot.nl/

Genealogie Online was one of the early adopters of this microdata schema (initiated by Google , Geni & Familysearch and presented at RootsTech 2012). Today I discovered that the scheme had changed significantly... well, let's call it progress on a standard.

What's the opinion of this group participants about this microdata schema?

Regards,
Bob Coret

Dallan Quass

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Aug 1, 2012, 2:42:30 PM8/1/12
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I encourage everyone to use this microformat. It will make tools for
searching web pages and copying data from a web page into your online
tree much easier to write.

Historical-data.org was able to get their schema officially santioned by
Schema.org, but as part of doing that they were asked to make a few
changes - see https://github.com/historical-data/schema/pull/32 for
example. I don't believe there are any more major changes forthcoming.

I believe that around 40 websites have implemented it so far. I've
implemented it at WeRelate.org - took a couple of hours is all.

The blog appears to be inactive unfortunately. Most of the recent work
is happening at the github site. (I'll ask them to address this.)

-dallan
http://www.werelate.org/wiki/User:Dallan

On 8/1/2012 8:48 AM, Bob Coret wrote:
> Does anyone know the status of the historical-data schema
> http://historical-data.org/ ?
> The weblog about this scheme seems somewhat inactive:
> http://historical-data-schema.blogspot.nl/
> <http://historical-data-schema.blogspot.nl/?view=classic>
>
> Genealogie Online was one of the early adopters of this microdata schema
> (initiated by Google , Geni & Familysearch and presented at RootsTech
> 2012). Today I discovered that the scheme had changed significantly...
> well, let's call it progress on a standard.
>
> What's the opinion of this group participants about this microdata schema?
>
> Regards,
> Bob Coret
> Coret Genealogie <http://genealogie.coret.org/en/>
>
> --
>
>
>

Bob Coret

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Aug 3, 2012, 11:49:11 AM8/3/12
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Of these 40 sites, how many implemented the current schema? I've checked some of the sites I know of (FamilySearch, WeRelate, Geni) and found they all still use HistoricalPerson(.html), which has disappeared (or beter: merged into Person)...

I will put the update of Genealogie Online to adhere to the latest definition of the historical-data scheme on my to-do list.

Bob

Op woensdag 1 augustus 2012 20:42:30 UTC+2 schreef DallanQ het volgende:

Dallan Quass

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Aug 3, 2012, 11:53:52 PM8/3/12
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Good question - I didn't ask how many had upgraded to the latest
version. I'm glad that I'm not the only one who hasn't upgraded yet.
I'll put that on my todo list as well. Personally I think
historical-data will become more widely used once the toolbar source
code is posted and people start writing browser plugins that take
advantage of it.

-dallan
http://www.werelate.org/wiki/User:Dallan
> <http://www.werelate.org/wiki/User:Dallan>
>
> --
>
>
>

Chris Whitten

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Aug 4, 2012, 8:47:49 AM8/4/12
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Ah, when I added them to WikiTree.com I'd wondered why it was "HistoricalPerson" and not just "Person." Updating is now on my to-do list too.

My current dream/vision for how a worldwide family tree becomes a reality is that Google does it with Schema. With these microformats they ought to be able to connect information on the same people from multiple websites. I know FamilySearch's goal is for everyone to identify the same people with their IDs, but I doubt that would ever be dynamic and inclusive enough.

Once Google starts taking advantage of the microformats -- for rich snippets, at least -- then webmasters will adopt them.

Chris

Bob Coret

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Aug 15, 2012, 2:54:28 PM8/15/12
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For those wondering if they should update to the latest version of the historical-data scheme and if your site will benefit, see the answer I got from Robert Garner (Google) >  https://github.com/historical-data/schema/issues/39#issuecomment-7765041 

Bob Coret

David N. Hale

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Oct 7, 2014, 4:43:40 PM10/7/14
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After no continued discussion on this thread for two years, I'm curious if there has been any changes that people are aware of regarding the schema.org adoption of the historical-data improvements. Have web sites been adopting this micro-data standard for presenting their data? 

Wouldn't it be awesome if Google started to display a small pedigree chart on search results, just like they do with the other schema.org data from wikipedia and others? What would it take for Google to recognize this and start doing it? Does a big player have to step up and become the authoritative source of this data, like wikipedia did several years ago?

-David

Dallan Quass

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Oct 7, 2014, 6:42:45 PM10/7/14
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WeRelate has implemented it, FamilySearch has implemented it, and I believe Bob Coret and geni have implemented it. I'm not sure about anyone else. I don't think it will take off unless as you say - google decides to do something _visible_ with it in search results.

It looks like google has started indexing FamilySearch historical records which have it. You can see this by searching for

john smith site:familysearch.org -supermainframeset

Most of the links are to historical records, and the one result that I reviewed had it.


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David N. Hale

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Oct 8, 2014, 10:04:09 AM10/8/14
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It seems that this is like one of those "chicken and egg" things. Even though there is adoption on these sites, it isn't complete. For example, while Geni has the Person type implemented on its person detail page, it isn't implemented on the MyHeritage pages. (Isn't Geni owned by MyHeritage?) Likewise, FamilySearch has the Person type on the historical records pages but not the other pages (Memories, Tree, etc.). Granted, some of these pages are hidden behind authentication, but that isn't the case for all of them. Hopefully a larger set of these types of pages will be available using the Person schema since those are generally the ones that show relationships to other records. 

-David

Luther Tychonievich

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Oct 8, 2014, 1:37:50 PM10/8/14
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Wouldn't it be awesome if Google started to display a small pedigree chart on search results, just like they do with the other schema.org data from wikipedia and others? What would it take for Google to recognize this and start doing it?

Interesting question. My recollection is that Robert Gardner and Dave Barney worked for Google when they developed historical-data.org, so I expect they would be able to say if that would be possible.  Does anyone know if they are rootsdev subscribers?

On the bigger "status of historical-data.org" question, Gardner submitted http://fhiso.org/files/cfp/cfps90.pdf which proposes that FHISO take over the maintenance and promotion of this standard.  Since FHISO is a comprised of volunteers, that means someone would need to volunteer to spearhead the effort.  In addition to needing a volunteer, FHISO is supposed to be consensus-based which means the details of these microdata would come up for debate and vote before FHISO would sponsor them; as can be seen from the comments on http://historical-data-schema.blogspot.com/ there are at least some people who have concerns with the current format.  I would guess that the earliest FHISO would move on that proposal would be after the adoption of a a core-concepts data model, which won't happen until after the exploratory work concludes and a project team starts to debate details…

It is my impression that if someone else wants to take over pushing historical-data.org forward to full schema.org inclusion, Barney and Gardner would be open to letting them take leadership.  

Dallan Quass

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Oct 8, 2014, 3:53:12 PM10/8/14
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I'll forward this thread to them in case they're not subscribers.

Robert Gardner

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Oct 8, 2014, 4:42:15 PM10/8/14
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I'm on rootsdev. Dave and I both still work for Google. We got approval from schema.org to include historical-data in the spec. They scheduled its inclusion and then Google's liaison to schema.org had something come up and took an extended leave, and the effort was accidentally dropped. Though we've tried to restart it since he's returned, we haven't had much success. Dave and I have moved on to other efforts.

However, historical-data can be used as is. It is fully compatible with schema.org and given schema.org's backward-compatible nature, historical-data does not interfere in any way with other schema.org markup. The only thing that's missing is that schema.org's tools recognize the tags.

As for revisiting historical-data after a core-concepts data model, that may be the right thing to do, but I'd be careful. schema.org's primary purpose is to provide semantic understanding to web pages. It is not a data interchange standard. historical-data was developed to improve the semantic language when speaking about historical people in web pages. It is not intended to represent a full data model. If you make it too complex it will be rejected by schema.org.

To the other question on including a pedigree on search results. We actually had something along those lines in progress but it was cancelled. I'm not sure Google is ready to get into the genealogy business at this time.

Bob Coret

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Oct 9, 2014, 5:27:42 AM10/9/14
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Robert,

Thanks for the update.
I hope Google will be doing more with the structured data they gather, I also expressed this in my presentation at Gaenovium 2014 last Tuesday.
At least I see in Google Webmaster Tools that data is recognized and 'harvested':


Bob
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