- From: Hausenblas, Michael <michael.hausenblas@deri.org>
- Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2011 06:53:51 +0100
- To: "Harry Halpin" <hhalpin@ibiblio.org>
- Cc: "Linked Data community" <public-lod@w3.org>, "Semantic Web" <semantic-web@w3.org>
On 16 Jun 2011, at 22:11, "Harry Halpin" <hhalpin@ibiblio.org> wrote: > I've been watching the community response to schema.org for the last > bit of time. Overall, I think we should clarify why people are upset. > First, there should be no reason to be upset that the major search > engines went off and created their own vocabularies. According to the > argument of decentralized extensibility, schema.org *exactly* what > Google/Yahoo!/Microsoft are supposed to be doing. It's a > straightfoward site that clearly for how the average Web developer can > use structured data in markup to solve real-world use-cases and > provides examples. That's the entire vision of the Semantic Web, let > a thousand ontologies bloom with no central control. > > The reason people are upset are that they didn't use RDFa, but instead > used microdata. One *cannot* argue that Google is ignoring open > standards. RDFa and microdata are *both* Last Call W3C Working Drafts > now. RDFa 1.0 is a spec but only for XHTML 1.0, which is not what most > of the Web uses. Microdata does have RDF parsing bugs, but again, most > developers outside the Semantic Web probably don't care - they want > JSON anyways. > > Form what I understand from tevents where Rich Snippets team has > presented is that RDFa is simply too complicated for ordinary web > developers to use. Google has been deploying Rich Snippets for two > years, claim to have user-studies and have experience with a large > user-base. This user-driven feedback should be taken on board by both > relevant WGs obviously, HTML and RDFa. Designing technology without > user-feedback leads to odd results (for proof, see many of the fun and > exiciting "httpRange-14" discussions). Which is also why many > practical developers do not use the technology. > > But realistically, it's not the RDFa WG's job to do user-studies and > build compelling user-experiences in products. They are only a few > people. Why has the *hundreds* of people in the Semantic Web community > not done such work? > > The fact of the matter is that the Semantic Web academic community has > had their priorities skewed to the wrong direction. Had folks been > spending time doing usability testing and focussing on user-feedback > on common problems (such as the rather obvious "vocabulary hosting" > problem) rather than focussing on things with little to no support > with the world outside academia, then we probably would not be in the > situation we are in today. Today, major companies such as Microsoft > (oData) and Google (microdata) are jumping on the "open data" > bandwagon but finding the RDF stack unacceptable. Some of it may be a > "not invented here" syndrome, but as anyone who has actually looked at > RDF/XML can tell you, some of it is hard-to-deny technical reasoning > by companies that have decided that "open data" is a great market but > do not agree with the technical choices made by the Semantic Web > stack. > > This is not to say good things can't come out of the academic > community - the *internet* came out of the academic community. But > seriously, at some point (think of the role of Netscape in getting the > Web going with the magic of images) commercial companies enter the > game. We should be happy now search engines are seeing value in > structured data on the Web. > > I would suggest the Semantic Web community take on-board the > "microdata" challenge in two different ways. First of all, start > focussing on user-studies and user experience (not just visual > interfaces, the Semantic Web has more than its share of user-hostile > visual interfaces). It's harder to publish academic papers on these > topics but possible (see SIGCHI), and would help a lot with actual > deployment. Second, we should start focussing more on actual empirical > data-driven feedback, both on what parts of RDF are being used and > common mistakes. With indexes such as the Billion Triple Challenge and > Sindice's index, we can actually do that with the Semantic Web. Third, > why not actually try to get RDF - or "open data more broadly" into the > browser in usable manner? Tabulator may be a step in the right > direction, but the user experience needs work. Fourth, why not start a > company and try to deliver products to actual end-users and give that > feedback to the wider community and W3C WGs (and if you already work > for an actual SemWeb company, please send your feedback from user > studies to the WG before Last Call)? I believe the Semantic Web > research community - which still has tons of funding and lots of > passion - can make the Web better. > > Schema.org is not a threat. It's an opportunity to step up. Good luck everyone! Amen.
Received on Friday, 17 June 2011 05:49:32 UTC