RE: imdb as linked open data?

"I'm not sure the Semantic Web is hard; we've just got to be clear about
how we communicate it to people."

agreed!


--cs

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Heath [mailto:Tom.Heath@talis.com] 
Sent: 04 April 2008 14:27
To: Chris Sizemore; public-lod@w3.org
Cc: Michael Smethurst; Silver Oliver; pepper@ontopia.net; Dan Brickley
Subject: RE: imdb as linked open data?

Hi Chris, all, 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-lod-request@w3.org
> [mailto:public-lod-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Chris Sizemore
> Sent: 04 April 2008 13:38
> To: public-lod@w3.org
> Cc: Michael Smethurst; Silver Oliver; pepper@ontopia.net
> Subject: RE: imdb as linked open data?
> 
> all--
>  
> so, i was correct in thinking that imdb is interesting to the LOD 
> community.

Correct :)
  
> i agree that offering "what's a/the Sem Web business model?" 
> is pretty important in order to get buy in... does anyone have any 
> contacts in and around imdb?

I think there might be a Bristol connection here. Perhaps danbri can
help. Dan?


> ***************** forgive the following if it's controversial
> -- i'm honestly just trying to understand better ***********

Discussion is good. Bring it on!
  
> however, on a more philosophical note, i DON'T think imdb neccesarily 
> needs to explicitly opt into the Web of Data in order for the world at

> large to find Sem Web value in that data... i suppose it would be very

> desirable for imdb to officially provide Open Data/rdf of their 
> content, but i don't think that's the only way for the Sem Web to gain

> value from imdb...
>  
> basically, my premise is this: imdb is on the Web of Docs, and that's 
> good enough for the purpose of answering the question to be posed here

> -- http://www.okkam.org/IRSW2008/ (the problem of identity and 
> reference on the Semantic Web is perhaps the single most important 
> issue for reaching a global scale. Initiatives like LinkedData, 
> OntoWorld and the large number of proposals aiming at using popular 
> URLs (e.g.
> Wikipedia's) as "canonical" URIs (especially for non informational 
> resources) show that a solution to this issue is very urgent and very 
> relevant.)
>  
> at this point in my indoctrination to LOD (i'm a long time semweb 
> fanboy, tho), i guess i disagree with: "From a SemWeb POV this 
> [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/#thing
> <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088846/#thing> ] is pretty useless since

> the URI doesn't resolve to RDF data.
> Identifiers on the Web are only as good as the data they point to. 
> IMDB URIs point to high-quality web pages, but not to data." -- 
> clearly i understand the difference between "data" and "web page" 
> here, but i don't agree that it's so black and white. i'd suggest: 
> "Identifiers on the Web are only as good as the clarity of what they 
> point to..." i don't think there has to be RDF at the other end to 
> make a URI useful, in many cases...

Chris, yes, I agree; been pondering this myself and for once I don't
agree with Richard; it's not so black and white. I was aiming for
something along these lines with URIs for Email Users:
<http://simile.mit.edu/mail/ReadMsg?listId=14&msgId=15205>

> at this point, for example at the BBC, my view is that identifiers and

> equivalency relationships are more important than RDF... just barely 
> more important, granted... having a common set of identifiers, like 
> navigable stars in the sky over an ocean, is what we need most now, in

> order to help us aggregate content across the org, and also link it up

> to useful stuff outside our walled garden.

The navigable stars analogy is a beautiful one.

> so, i'm one of those who feel that websites like imdb, wikipedia, and 
> musicbrainz provide great identifiers for non-information resources 
> even in their Web of Docs form. i know that most of you here will feel

> that this is lazy, too informal, and naive of me. but my argument is 
> that, for sites like those i mention (not all websites, by any means) 
> we may as well, for the purposes of our day to day use cases, use 
> their URLs as if they were Sem Web URIs. on these sites, the 
> distinction between resource and representation (concept and doc about

> concept) is not what's pertinent.
>  
> i'm aware that most on this list will make a religious distinction 
> between:
>  
> http://dbpedia.org/resource/Madonna_%28entertainer%29
>  
> and
>  
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(entertainer)
>  
> but i think that, by convention, and in the contexts they'd actually 
> be used, we should treat them both as identifiers for the same 
> concept, and that they are essentially sameAs's *in common 
> practice"...

Hmmm...
  
> in other words, as much as i love dbPedia and think it's a brilliant 
> step forward, i personally was fine with WIkipedia URLs as 
> identifiers. the incredible thing about dbpedia is the data mining to 
> extract RDF, not the URIs or content negotiation.
>  
> i KNOW that, technically, what i'm saying breaks all our rules -- and 
> i followed 
> http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/httpRange-14/2007-05-31/HttpRan
> ge-14.html closely -- but philosophically i think there's something to

> what i'm saying... if the Web is easy and the Sem Web hard, must we 
> insist on perfection? must we insist that imdb agree with us and 
> explicitly opt in?

Perhaps the Web was hard in the early days as well though, we've just
forgotten? I'm not sure the Semantic Web is hard; we've just got to be
clear about how we communicate it to people.

> practically, tho, in an "official" LOD grammar sense, this works just 
> fine for me:
> 
> <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Madonna_%28entertainer%29
> <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Madonna_%28entertainer%29> > 
> foaf:isPrimaryTopicOf <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000187/
> <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000187/> >
> 
> <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Madonna_%28entertainer%29
> <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Madonna_%28entertainer%29> > 
> foaf:isPrimaryTopicOf 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(entertainer
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(entertainer> )
> 
> that seems useful and easy. to me, that's allowing a "sameAs"-like 
> relationship between Web of Docs URLs and SemWeb URIs... i could 
> really really run with that approach...
> 
> but now, to stir things up a bit...
> 
> given the above, thus:
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(entertainer
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna_(entertainer> ) owl:sameAs 
> <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000187/
> <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000187/> >
> 
>  
> right? right?  ;-)

No way. No way at all :D

Cheers,

Tom.

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Received on Friday, 4 April 2008 14:55:23 UTC