Note: Is a Comment Author a Person or an Organization? (schema.org)

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There is a way to specify that something is a comment on a website for computers using code from schema.org. Unfortunately, almost every time I visit schema.org I'm left with dread and confusion, and this time was no different. It says that the author of a Comment must be a Person or Organization, which makes perfect sense for a data modeling perspective but absolutely no sense at all from a data input perspective.

There is no comment form on the planet that asks whether the commenter is a person or an organization, so this is simply not information that websites have. As usual, there is no footnote on the documentation page about how to handle this, despite the fact this isn't even an edge case, it's the case on any website that is powered by WordPress or similar CMS's.

What is the common denominator between Person and Organization? Thing. I guess that's what's going to be commenting then. A Thing left a comment on my website.

Written by Noel Santos.

About the Author

I'm a self-taught Brazilian programmer graduated in IT from a FATEC. In a world of increasingly complex and essential computers, I decided to use my technical expertise in hardware, desktop applications, and web technologies to create an informative resource to make PC's easier to understand.

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