Re: Making human-friendly linked data pages more human-friendly

Matthias Samwald wrote:
> A central idea of linked data is, in my understanding, that every 
> resource has not only a HTTP - resolvable RDF description of itself, 
> but also a human-friendly rendering that can be viewed in a web 
> browser. With the increasing popularity of RDFa, the URIs of these 
> resources are not only hidden away in triplestores, but become 
> increasingly exposed on web pages. People want to click on them, and, 
> hopefully, not all of these people come from the core community of RDF 
> enthusiasts.
>
> This means that the HTML rendering of linked data resources might need 
> to look a bit sexier than it does today. I dare to say that the 
> Pubby-esque rendering of DBpedia pages such as
> http://dbpedia.org/page/Primary_motor_cortex
> is helpful to get a quick overview of the RDF triples about this 
> resource, but non-RDF-enthusiasts would not find it very inviting.
Pubby isn't how DBpedia is published today. It is done via Virtuoso 
(been so for quite a long time now), which has in-built Linked Data 
Publishing/Deployment functionality [1].
>
> This could be improved by changes in the layout, and possibly a 
> manually curated ordering of properties. For example,
> http://d.opencalais.com/er/company/ralg-tr1r/f8a13a13-8dbc-3d7e-82b6-1d7968476cae.html 
>
> definitely looks more inviting than the typical DBpedia page (albeit 
> still a bit sterile).
You can tweak the HTML template and just send it to us. BTW, the 
URIBurner [2] pages which also use exactly the same Linked Data 
Deployment functionality behind DBpedia also have a slightly different 
look and feel. That can be applied to DBpedia in nano seconds.
>
> In the case of DBpedia, it might be better to expose the excellent 
> human-readable Wikipedia page for each resource, plus a prominently 
> positioned 'show raw data' tab at the top. For other linked data 
> resources that are not derived from existing human-friendly web pages, 
> a few stylistic changes (ala OpenCalais) already might improve the 
> situation a lot.
>
> Note that this comment is not intended to be a criticism of DBpedia, 
> but of all Linked Data resources that expose HTML descriptions of 
> resources. DBpedia is just the most popular example.
Not seen as criticism, just a wake up call. On our part (OpenLink) we've 
always sought to draw a small line between OpenLink branding and the 
more community oriented DBpedia project. Thus, our preference has been 
to wait for community preferences, and then within that context apply 
updates to the project, especially re. aesthetics.

Links:

1. 
http://virtuoso.openlinksw.com/Whitepapers/html/vdld_html/VirtDeployingLinkedDataGuide.html 
-- Virtuoso Linked Data Deployment Guide
2. http://www.uriburner.com/wiki/URIBurner/ 


Kingsley
>
> Cheers,
> Matthias Samwald
>
> DERI Galway, Ireland
> http://deri.ie/
>
> Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution & Cognition Research, Austria
> http://kli.ac.at/
>
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------
> From: "Danny Ayers" <danny.ayers@gmail.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, September 15, 2009 4:03 AM
> To: <public-lod@w3.org>
> Subject: dbpedia not very visible, nor fun
>
>> It seems I have a Wikipedia page in my name (ok, I only did fact-check
>> edits, ok!?). So tonight I went looking for the corresponding triples,
>> looking for my ultimate URI...
>>
>> Google "dbpedia" => front page, with news
>>
>> on the list on the left is "Online Access"
>>
>> what do you get?
>>
>> [[
>> The DBpedia data set can be accessed online via a SPARQL query
>> endpoint and as Linked Data.
>>
>> Contents
>> 1. Querying DBpedia
>> 1.1. Public SPARQL Endpoint
>> 1.2. Public Faceted Web Service Interface
>> 1.3. Example queries displayed with the Berlin SNORQL query explorer
>> 1.4. Examples rendering DBpedia Data with Google Map
>> 1.5. Example displaying DBpedia Data with Exhibit
>> 1.6. Example displaying DBpedia Data with gFacet
>> 2. Linked Data
>> 2.1. Background
>> 2.2. The DBpedia Linked Data Interface
>> 2.3. Sample Resources
>> 2.4. Sample Views of 2 Sample DBpedia Resources
>> 3. Semantic Web Crawling Sitemap
>> ]]
>>
>> Yeah. Unless you're a triplehead none of these will mean a thing. Even
>> then it's not obvious.
>>
>> Could someone please stick something more rewarding near the top! I
>> don't know, maybe a Google-esque text entry form field for a regex on
>> the SPARQL. Anything but blurb.
>>
>> Even being relatively familiar with the tech, I still haven't a clue
>> how to take my little query (do I have a URI here?) forward.
>>
>> Presentation please.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Danny.
>>
>> -- 
>> http://danny.ayers.name 
>
>
>


-- 


Regards,

Kingsley Idehen       Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
President & CEO 
OpenLink Software     Web: http://www.openlinksw.com

Received on Tuesday, 15 September 2009 11:35:02 UTC