- From: Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com>
- Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2010 16:10:54 -0400
- To: Enrico Motta <e.motta@open.ac.uk>
- CC: Chris Bizer <chris@bizer.de>, Martin Hepp <martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org>, Thomas Steiner <tsteiner@google.com>, Semantic Web <semantic-web@w3.org>, public-lod <public-lod@w3.org>, Anja Jentzsch <anja@anjeve.de>, semanticweb <semanticweb@yahoogroups.com>, Giovanni Tummarello <giovanni.tummarello@deri.org>, Mathieu d'Aquin <m.daquin@open.ac.uk>
On 10/21/10 3:45 PM, Kingsley Idehen wrote: > On 10/21/10 3:23 PM, Enrico Motta wrote: >> Chris >> >> I strongly agree with the points made by Martin and Giovanni. Of >> course the LOD initiative has had a lot of positive impact and you >> cannot be blamed for being successful, but at the some time I am >> worried that teh success and visibility of the LOD cloud is having >> some rather serious negative consequences. Specifically: >> >> 1) lots of people, even within the SW community, now routinely >> describe the LOD as the 'semantic web'. This is not only >> dramatically incorrect (and bad for students and people who want to >> know about the SW) but also an obstacle to progress: anything which >> is not in the LOD diagram does not exist, and this is really not good >> for the SW community as a whole (including the people at the centre >> of the LOD initiative). Even worse, in the past 12-18 months I have >> noticed that this viewpoint has also been embraced by funding bodies >> and linking to LOD is becoming a necessary condition for a SW >> project. Again, I think this is undesirable - see also Martin's email >> on this thread. Typo cleanup repost: I agree, but do note (as per my earlier response) the success of the LOD cloud pictorial as marketing collateral isn't something that's arisen by deliberate exclusionary actions on anyone's part per se*. Methinks many have simply slapped it into their presentations devoid of actual presentation goals. This single activity has helped and hurt the LOD cloud pictorial. Hurt meaning: creating the perception you describe above. > >> >> 2) Because the LOD is perceived as the 'official SW' and because >> resources in the LOD have to comply with a number of guidelines, >> people also assume that LOD resources exhibit higher quality. > I hope not, and I don't think so. Even if it were to be true, would you blame the production of the pictorial for that? Really though, I don't recall anyone saying or implying that LOD pictorial is the Linked Data gospel. > >> Unfortunately in our experience this is not really the case, and this >> also generates negative consequences. That is, if LOD is the >> 'official high quality SW ' and there are so many issues with the >> data, automatically people assume that the rest of the SW is a lot >> worse, even though this is not necessarily the case. >> >> So, as other people have already said, maybe it is time to re-examine >> teh design criteria for LOD and the way this is presented? > > But this should simple be a case of people from the community > producing additional collateral. The LOD cloud has some interesting > history that goes something like this: > > 1. Banff 2007 (Linked Data coming out party) -- Chris was giving a DBpedia demo showing its inter-connectedness, TimBL then suggest to Chris to turn it into a cloud with periodic updates for demonstrating growth 2. Richard (working with Chris at the time) picked up the challenge and refined the initial graphic 3. People started using it to show growth of DBpedia which also implied LOD cloud since the connections in the pictorial were reciprocal 4. Cloud pictorial caught fire re. powerpoint presentations + exponential effect of slideshare. ** Thus, why can't others simply emulate this process, based on respective areas of interest, on an individual or group basis? ** [SNIP] -- Regards, Kingsley Idehen President& CEO OpenLink Software Web: http://www.openlinksw.com Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen Twitter/Identi.ca: kidehen
Received on Thursday, 21 October 2010 20:11:26 UTC