Re: WG: Schema.org considered helpful

Just a few remarks:

- The internet was created by the USA army 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet#History), the World Wide Web came 
out of the scientific/research world.
- As Rurik Greenall states: microformats are just another form of the 
obsolete "record" concept. In linked data it's about networked information

Lukas Koster

On 17-6-2011 13:28, Pascal Christoph wrote:
> Hello Joachim,
>
> in the Email from Harry Halpin you attached below it is stated that
> Netscape invented the first graphical browser:
>
> "This is not to say good things can't come out of the academic
> community - the *internet* came out of the academic community. But
> seriously, at some point (think of the role of Netscape in getting the
> Web going with the magic of images) commercial companies enter the
> game. We should be happy now search engines are seeing value in
> structured data on the Web."
>
> But as I remember and Wikipedia[0] tells me:
>
> "In 1993, NCSA released the Mosaic web browser, the first popular
> graphical Web browser, which played an important part in expanding the
> growth of the World Wide Web. NCSA Mosaic was written by Marc Andreessen
> and Eric Bina, who went on to develop the Netscape Web browser."
> while the NCSA[0] is:
> "
> The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is an
> American state-federal partnership to develop and deploy national-scale
> cyberinfrastructure that advances science and engineering. NCSA operates
> as a unit of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign but it
> provides high-performance computing resources to researchers across the
> country.
> "
>
> This is, in my opinion, just one mistake among others in Harry's Mail: I
> honestly cannot share his enthusiasm (which in my eyes is simply
> naiveté). See also the actual blog of Jeff Sayre, who first stated via
> twitter:
> "Anything that makes the linking of data more prevalent on the Web I'm
> all for! " and now states that that was a "less-than-thoughtful
> response". His conclusion now:
> "Although Web standards-making bodies are far from perfect, they are the
> closest entity we have to offering open discussions. This is in stark
> contrast to what Google, Bing, and Yahoo! have done with setting up
> Schema.org. Their process is not open and they cannot be considered a
> Web standard’s body."
>
> In the original google-announcements it was stated that you should use
> microformat *or* RDFa [3](reading the "or" as "exclusive or").This would
> lead more or less to the death of RDFa as you can easily imagine. Now,
> through massive pressure and protests from many developers and users out
> there, it seems that this was changed so that it would be OK to use both
> formats (citation needed). Thus, it pays to be critical.
> But, will we be able to change the flaw that companies create (and
> *solely* control!) standards? In my eyes, that is a paradigm shift for
> the web-architecture we encounter here. It may be good in the short term
> but I seriously doubt that it will be benefically in the long term.
>
> -o
>
> [0](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Center_for_Supercomputing_Applications)
>
> [1]http://jeffsayre.com/2011/06/15/subverting-the-open-web-schema-orgs-scheme-to-control-structured-data/
>
> [3]http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/06/introducing-schemaorg-search-engines.html
>
> Am 17.06.2011 09:48 schrieb Neubert Joachim:
>> Harrys summary and the ongoing argument on http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-lod/
>> could be helpful for our discussions, too.
>>
>> Cheers, Joachim
>>
>> -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
>> Von: public-lod-request@w3.org [mailto:public-lod-request@w3.org] Im Auftrag von Harry Halpin
>> Gesendet: Donnerstag, 16. Juni 2011 23:09
>> An: Linked Data community; Semantic Web
>> Betreff: Schema.org considered helpful
>>
>> I've been watching the community response to schema.org for the last
>> bit of time. Overall, I think we should clarify why people are upset.
>> First, there should be no reason to be upset that the major search
>> engines went off and created their own vocabularies. According to the
>> argument of decentralized extensibility, schema.org *exactly* what
>> Google/Yahoo!/Microsoft are supposed to be doing. It's a
>> straightfoward site that clearly for how the average Web developer can
>> use structured data in markup to solve real-world use-cases and
>> provides examples.  That's the entire vision of the Semantic Web, let
>> a thousand ontologies bloom with no central control.
>>
>> The reason people are upset are that they didn't use RDFa, but instead
>> used microdata. One *cannot* argue that Google is ignoring open
>> standards. RDFa and microdata are *both* Last Call W3C Working Drafts
>> now. RDFa 1.0 is a spec but only for XHTML 1.0, which is not what most
>> of the Web uses. Microdata does have RDF parsing bugs, but again, most
>> developers outside the Semantic Web probably don't care - they want
>> JSON anyways.
>>
>> Form what I understand from tevents  where Rich Snippets team has
>> presented is that RDFa is simply too complicated for ordinary web
>> developers to use. Google has been deploying Rich Snippets for two
>> years, claim to have user-studies  and have experience with a large
>> user-base. This user-driven feedback should be taken on board by both
>> relevant WGs obviously, HTML and RDFa. Designing technology without
>> user-feedback leads to odd results (for proof, see many of the fun and
>> exiciting "httpRange-14" discussions). Which is also why many
>> practical developers do not use the technology.
>>
>> But realistically, it's not the RDFa WG's job to do user-studies and
>> build compelling user-experiences in products. They are only a few
>> people. Why has the *hundreds* of people in the Semantic Web community
>> not done such work?
>>
>> The fact of the matter is that the Semantic Web academic community has
>> had their priorities skewed to the wrong direction. Had folks been
>> spending time doing usability testing and focussing on user-feedback
>> on common problems (such as the rather obvious "vocabulary hosting"
>> problem) rather than focussing on things with little to no support
>> with the world outside academia, then we probably would not be in the
>> situation we are in today. Today, major companies such as Microsoft
>> (oData) and Google (microdata) are jumping on the "open data"
>> bandwagon but finding the RDF stack unacceptable. Some of it may be a
>> "not invented here" syndrome, but as anyone who has actually looked at
>> RDF/XML can tell you, some of it is hard-to-deny technical reasoning
>> by companies that have decided that "open data" is a great market but
>> do not agree with the technical choices made by the  Semantic Web
>> stack.
>>
>> This is not to say good things can't come out of the academic
>> community - the *internet* came out of the academic community. But
>> seriously, at some point (think of the role of Netscape in getting the
>> Web going with the magic of images) commercial companies enter the
>> game. We should be happy now search engines are seeing value in
>> structured data on the Web.
>>
>> I would suggest the Semantic Web community take on-board the
>> "microdata" challenge in two different ways. First of all, start
>> focussing on user-studies and user experience (not just visual
>> interfaces, the Semantic Web has more than its share of user-hostile
>> visual interfaces). It's harder to publish academic papers on these
>> topics but possible (see SIGCHI), and would help a lot with actual
>> deployment. Second, we should start focussing more on actual empirical
>> data-driven feedback, both on what parts of RDF are being used and
>> common mistakes. With indexes such as the Billion Triple Challenge and
>> Sindice's index, we can actually do that with the Semantic Web. Third,
>> why not actually try to get RDF - or "open data more broadly" into the
>> browser in usable manner? Tabulator may be a step in the right
>> direction, but the user experience needs work. Fourth, why not start a
>> company and try to deliver products to actual end-users and give that
>> feedback to the wider community and W3C WGs (and if you already work
>> for an actual SemWeb company, please send your feedback from user
>> studies to the WG before Last Call)? I believe the Semantic Web
>> research community - which still has tons of funding and lots of
>> passion - can make the Web better.
>>
>> Schema.org is not a threat. It's an opportunity to step up. Good luck everyone!
>>
>>             cheers,
>>                harry
>>
>> P.S.: Note this opinions are purely personal and held as an individual.
>>
>>
>
>
>

Received on Sunday, 19 June 2011 09:45:30 UTC