LOD cloud updated

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Peter Ansell <ansell.peter@gmail.com>
Date: 2 Apr 2008 08:02
Subject: Re: LOD cloud updated
To: Richard Cyganiak <richard@cyganiak.de>


On 01/04/2008, Richard Cyganiak <richard@cyganiak.de> wrote:

 > On 1 Apr 2008, at 02:17, Peter Ansell wrote:
 >
 > I think for one of the most "connected" elements in the graph, FOAF,
 > is so distributed that it would be impossible to put a number on it
 >
 > Actually FOAF is not *that* distributed -- I did some crawls of FOAF data,
 > and it seems that the number of individual hand-maintained FOAF files out
 > there is fairly small, a few thousand tops. The rest is coming from a fairly
 > small number (10-20) of social network sites.
 >
 > I would like a Linked Data diagram which explicitly gave the links
 > between the FOAF related sites, ie, which sites and whether they do
 > actually interoperate
 >
 > To be honest, I lumped all the FOAF together in a single bubble simply
 > because I didn't want to put in the time to research all FOAF-producing
 > sites out there to trace their user numbers and links. I think the truth is
 > that most of them are "islands" with just internal links. It's the
 > hand-maintained FOAF files that tie it all together by linking into those
 > islands.
 >
 >
 > Just to clarify overall though, is FOAF in its current recommended
 > usages, ie, give a name and an mboxsha1sum as the "linked data"
 > considered part of the mainstream? Is extending one of these entries
 > with a generic seeAlso considered "linked data"? Should FOAF be not
 > considered Linked Data unless the items are given dereferenceable
 > URI's using a meaningful foaf terminology term?
 >
 > Let's check Tim's criteria to see if FOAF profiles are linked data:
 >
 > 1. Use URIs as names for things -- check. The FOAF spec also recommends
 > giving yourself a dereferenceable URI.
 >
 > 2. Use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those names -- check.
 >
 > 3. When someone looks up a URI, provide useful information -- check.
 >
 > 4. Include links to other URIs. so that they can discover more things --
 > Well, I would prefer direct foaf:knows links to other people's URIs over
 > FOAF's rdfs:seeAlso approach. Still, rdfs:seeAlso to other people's FOAF
 > profiles allows me to discover other related resources, which is the main
 > point. So, check.


The technical spec allows for "Linked Data" but in practice how often
 are the seeAlso or foaf:Agent URI's used by big producers to interlink
 their own FOAF Profiles, and how many do it outside of their sites. It
 would be nice to have a bubble for each of the major providers that
 support these things, as the hand-written FOAF files have a reasonably
 low use of foaf:Agent with a URI and only a moderate usage of seeAlso
 to link to the foaf.rdf files displayed by others. I think a real
 bootstrap of the FOAF networks theory is yet to be done, although
 experimenting with a simple static file on ones web server does show
 up some of the difficulties and could be used to make the real social
 network providers implementations better.

 Hopefully the use of seeAlso as "The Link" is being heavily
 discouraged in other Linked Data efforts which do not have the unusual
 characteristics that FOAF person oriented communities display.


 Peter

Received on Tuesday, 1 April 2008 22:04:27 UTC