do type=#id values have to be explicitly typed in JSON-LD? - schema.org

Question

I'm looking into JSON-LD specifically in combination with schema.org.
one of the Json-LD examples of schema.org/Person struck me as wrong:
{
"#context": "http://schema.org",
"#type": "Person",
"address": {
"#type": "PostalAddress",
"addressLocality": "Seattle",
"addressRegion": "WA",
"postalCode": "98052",
"streetAddress": "20341 Whitworth Institute 405 N. Whitworth"
},
"colleague": [
"http://www.xyz.edu/students/alicejones.html",
"http://www.xyz.edu/students/bobsmith.html"
],
"email": "mailto:jane-doe#xyz.edu",
"image": "janedoe.jpg",
"jobTitle": "Professor",
"name": "Jane Doe",
"telephone": "[phone]",
"url": "http://www.janedoe.com"
}
What seems wrong to me is that colleague is defined to be of type=Person (see above link), but instead an entity reference (url/text) is supplied.
The proper way to format this seems to be supplying extra info in the #context like so:
{
"#context": {
"#vocab": "http://schema.org/",
"colleague": { "#type": "#id" }
},
"#type": "Person",
"address": {
"#type": "PostalAddress",
"addressLocality": "Seattle",
"addressRegion": "WA",
"postalCode": "98052",
"streetAddress": "20341 Whitworth Institute 405 N. Whitworth"
},
"colleague": [
"http://www.xyz.edu/students/alicejones.html",
"http://www.xyz.edu/students/bobsmith.html"
],
"email": "mailto:jane-doe#xyz.edu",
"image": "janedoe.jpg",
"jobTitle": "Professor",
"name": "Jane Doe",
"telephone": "[phone]",
"url": "http://www.janedoe.com"
}
Is the example on schema.org (code example 1) indeed incorrect/incomplete, and is code example 2 correct?
Or in general: when referencing instead of embedding entities, is it required to make this explicit (using #type: #id) or, alternatively, is there some implicit notion in the spec that when a value is an URL it's considered to be a reference by #id?

Answer 1

You are right, the example is not 100% correct. The type-coercion to #id is missing. I filed a bug to get this fixed: https://github.com/schemaorg/schemaorg/issues/929