Re: Newsletter & Call for Papers WebSci'18

It seems to me there are different aspects of the process involved, sometimes mixed up.
There is the research on the Web itself (and on any other discipline, as far as this discussion is concerned), and the issue of scholarly communication.
Some of the “confusion” seems to emerge from the fact that many are trying to apply the results of the first (research) to the second (communication), and sometimes the issues and requirements get mixed.

Scholarly communication needs to allow (among other requirements)
1 - describing and detailing the actual results/techniques/approaches being presented, allowing
2 - comparisons, verification/validation and reproducibility by others, which often requires an explicit or implicit agreement on the social process that undergoes some of these activities; and
3 -providing this in a “permanent” (archival) way that could be accessed and used over long periods of time.

Natural language and the print-based media have evolved over centuries to provide a “reasonable” set of alternatives to each of the requirements above, with all the flaws and shortcomings that have already been pointed out - but it’s the one that the community, so far, has learned and accepted how to work with.
The Internet, hypertext and web technologies have provided new alternatives for each of these requirements, but these alternatives are still in their infancy, especially when compared to the traditional established technologies. I think this explains why they haven't been widely adopted, even by expert practitioners of the technology itself.

Take 1, for example. We have all been trained on how to write sequentially (as Ted Nelson puts it…). Nobody really knows how to write hypertext properly; we don’t even know what are the criteria and parameters to evaluate hypertext as an effective media for communication (of any kind, not only scholarly!). I claim that to use the Web in a really webby way one should author “proper” hypertexts.

Regarding 2, in addition to the issue above, there are a whole slew of new (social) process alternatives enabled by the technologies, for which again we haven’t yet found a consensus within the community on how to proceed (e.g., reviewing process, identity/authentication, provenance, social networking, etc…). I expect time will show what works, and how.

Regarding 3, it’s not clear at all how long will the communication made via the new technologies will really last… we see already evidence of link rot, for instance, even for recent content. For example, can we safely assume that the contents made available using the new technologies will be available, accessible and usable 20 years from now? Actually, some may even ask, Is this a real requirement at all?

To summarize, I believe it will take some time until we (the scientific community, and not only Web/Semantic Web) find out a combination of technologies and social processes that is acceptable given such requirements. It will also require (re)education and (re)training of all actors involved, which again takes time and effort  - at least to the same extent that current traditional media and processes do.
I don’t believe we will abandon current practice before this happens, and it is likely that several forms will coexist during a certain period.

As researchers and practitioners of some of the relevant technologies, we can n acceptable propose alternatives, as done by several members of this community. We can, and should, provide venues where these technologies are tried out, otherwise we will never know when a given set of alternatives has reached a maturity level to replace the existing ones. I see Sarven’s “prodding” as a way to encourage us to keep this in mind, working as “entropic force” that stimulates system growth, which is a positive thing.

Cheers
Daniel
—

Daniel Schwabe                      Dept. de Informatica, PUC-Rio
Tel:+55-21-3527 1500 r. 4356        R. M. de S. Vicente, 225
Fax: +55-21-3527 1530               Rio de Janeiro, RJ 22453-900, Brasil
http://www.inf.puc-rio.br/~dschwabe

Received on Tuesday, 20 February 2018 17:13:44 UTC