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

Hi Kingsley & All --

Good to see that the top layers of the cake are getting some attention.
After all that's where the icing is (:-)

We have an approach to making the results from RDF and other queries more
friendly.  It's online at the site below [1,2].

However, the more you think about this, the more you realize that user
friendly answer displays are  necessary, but not sufficient for the general
population of users.

 A big advantage of RDF is that it should enable ordinary users to ask
things no-one has thought of asking before.  Using their own words and
phrases.  Handing them a SPARQL manual definitely falls short.

We approach this by supporting the writing of rules in English into a
browser.  Then users can run the rules, again in the browser.  When
necessary, SQL is generated automatically from the rules.

That's still not the whole story though.  Reasoning over RDF gets
complicated, arguably much more so than over SQL databases.  This raises a
question of trust.  How do I know what the system did when it suggested that
I invest everything in Lehman Brothers?

The system [1] produces English explanations, based on underlying proof
trees, showing the what inferences and data were used in answering a
question.  You can see a simple of example of this by running [2] in a
browser, and asking for explanations.

Apologies to folks who have seen this before, and thanks for comments.

                                             -- Adrian

[1]  Internet Business Logic
A Wiki and SOA Endpoint for Executable *Open *Vocabulary English over SQL
and RDF
Online at www.reengineeringllc.com    Shared use is *free*

[2]  www.reengineeringllc.com/demo_agents/RDFQueryLangComparison1.agent



On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 7:34 AM, Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com>wrote:

> 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<http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/%7Ekidehen>
> President & CEO OpenLink Software     Web: http://www.openlinksw.com
>
>
>
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