Q:

Schema.org/Microdata markup for list of recent posts without providing "author" / "publisher"? 

The following code shows a list of links to recent posts on an experimental blog site I am playing with.  The problem is that this fails Google's Structured Data Testing Tool because it is missing required items such as author and publisher. 
But I don't want to show these for recent posts and I don't want to show them for every blog post either.   What should I do?   Get rid of the structured data? 
Put the required stuff in and hide it with CSS?  Or leave as is? 
<section>
<header>
<h4 class="h4-padding">Recent Posts</h4>
</header>
<ul>
<li>
<article itemprop="blogPost" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/BlogPosting">
<header itemprop="name headline">
<h5><a href="http://myblog.com/post/5/1/2016/a-very-interesting-thing">A very interesting thing</a></h5>
</header>
</article>
</li>
<li>
<article itemprop="blogPost" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/BlogPosting">
<header itemprop="name headline">
<h5><a href="http://myblog.com/post/30/7/2015/something-even-more-interesting">Something event more interesting</a></h5>
</header>
</article>
</li>
<li>
<article itemprop="blogPost" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/BlogPosting">
<header itemprop="name headline">
<h5><a href="http://myblog.com/something-very-dull">Something very dull</a></h5>
</header>
</article>
</li>
</ul>

A:

It’s perfectly fine not to provide these properties.  Schema.org doesn’t require any property. 
If Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool says that certain properties are missing, what it really means is: 
"If you don’t provide these properties, we won’t show the corresponding Rich Snippet or Knowledge Graph feature in Google Search"
There’s no need to get rid of your structured data just because Google (as one of many consumers) currently doesn’t do something with it.  It can be useful for other consumers, and Google may change/introduce features in the future that work with your current set of properties.