Re: More ESWC 2008 Linked Data Playground

Kingsley Idehen wrote:
> Amen to Dog-fooding!
>
> I hope we are getting closer to the day when the dialog sample below 
> becomes the norm:
>
> Technology Vendor or Proponent: I am a vendor and/or proponent of 
> Technology X that unveils the virtues of a given paradigm e.g Linked Data
>
> Technology Customer: Do you exploit the virtues of the technology 
> yourself? If so, please show me how.
>
> The scenario above is very different from the general practice which 
> always omits the vital "Dog-fooding" aspect :-(
Kingsley,

I think there's more to this than just "people generally don't eat their 
own dogfood." This is a special case that we can analyze in its own context.

To the sysadmin/author of a web site--even a pro-SW site in this case, 
there is no immediate feedback when they forget to publish the same data 
in RDF. No harm, but no benefit, either. In fact, nothing happens 
immediately either way. In the absence of any feedback, it's easy to 
forget, and hard to justify the extra effort.

This is like wearing seatbelt. People naturally forget to wear seatbelt 
just because they don't get hurt immediately when they start driving 
without seatbelt. So, the car industry need to invent seatbelt alarm. 
Eventually, with enough finger wagging (alarm beeping), some people get 
into the habit of wearing seatbelt, albeit grudgingly.

I believe there need to be a mechanism for rewarding RDF publishing, or 
scolding for forgetting. Do you have that mechanism in-place?

David

Received on Saturday, 31 May 2008 21:18:24 UTC