Re: Linked Data Dogfood circa. 2013

I don't agree that the idea of "publish some stuff and they will come,
both new publishers and consumers" has failed.  But I do think some
expectations have been too high.

Perhaps it is like a scale-free distribution.  Sure, there is lots of
data that is published and ignored, just as there are millions of
personal blog sites on the web that are ignored.  But there is also some
data that is published and is very valuable to Real Applications, just
as sites like http://www.nytimes.com/ are valuable to many readers.
Biological / life sciences data comes to mind.  It is not always 5-star
-- often 4-star or only 3-star:
http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html

One would be foolish to think that one's personal blog would be useful
to many others just because it is published on the web.  Similarly one
would be foolish to think that one's data would be useful to others
merely because it is published as Linked Data.  But blogs and datasets
need to be published before consumers can decide which of them are
valuable, so I think it's good to keep encouraging data publication.

David


On Fri, 2013-01-04 at 21:18 +0000, Hugh Glaser wrote:
> Wow Giovanni.
> I wrote the following this afternoon, and have been sitting trying to
> work out whether I should send it.
> I think it means you are not alone in your views!:
> 
> I'm going to sound like a broken record here.
> 
> All well and good, yes it would be great to have the Dogfood server
> working properly.
> But (to push the analogy further), is there any point in making
> DogFood if there are no dogs eating it?
> Is this really what all these clever people should be spending their
> time on?
> 
> I knew Dogfood wasn't in a very good state because I get error reports
> when my system accesses it.
> But did anyone else notice?
> 
> I'm so sad (yes really!) that after all these years people still run
> around getting excited about publishing data, and fiddling with little
> things, and yet it seems there is hardly a system that does any
> significant consumption (of any third party data).
> 
> Best
> Hugh
> 
> On 4 Jan 2013, at 21:02, Giovanni Tummarello <giovanni.tummarello@deri.org>
>  wrote:
> 
> > One might just simply stay silent and move along, but i take a few
> > seconds to restate the obvious.
> > 
> > It is a fact that Linked data as " publish some stuff and they will
> > come, both new publishers and consumers" has failed.
> > 
> > The idea of putting some "extra energy" would simply be useless per se
> > BUT it becomes  wrong when one tries to involve others e.g. gullible
> > newcomers,  fresh ph.d students who trust that "hey if my ph.d advisor
> > made a career out of it, and EU gave him so much money it must be real
> > right?"
> > 
> > IAs community of people who claim to have something to do with
> > research (and not a cult) every once in a while is learn from the
> > above lesson and devise NEW methods and strategies. In other words,
> > move ahead in a smart way.
> > 
> > I am by no mean trowing all away.
> > 
> > * publishing structured data on the web is already a *huge thing* with
> > schema.org and the rest. Why? because of the clear incentive SEO.
> > * RDF is a great model for heterogeneous data integration and i think
> > it will explode in (certain) enterprises (knowledge intensive)
> > 
> > What we're seeking here is more advanced, flexible uses of structured
> > data published, e.g. by smart clients, that do useful things for
> > people.
> > The key is to show these clients, these useful things. What other
> > (realistic) incentive can we create that make people publish data? how
> > would a real "linked data client" work and provide benefit to a real
> > world, non academic example class of users (if not all?) .
> > 
> > my wish for 2013 about linked data is that the discussion focuses on
> > this. With people concentrated on the "full circle, round trip"
> > experience, with incentives for all (and how to start the virtuous
> > circle).
> > 
> > Gio
> > 
> > 
> > On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 2:03 PM, William Waites <ww@styx.org> wrote:
> >> hmmm.... not so tasty:
> >> 
> >>    warning: array_keys() [function.array-keys]: The first argument should
> >>    be an array in
> >>    /var/www/drupal-6.22/sites/all/modules/dogfood/dogfood.module on
> >>    line 1807.
> >> 
> >> digging deeper:
> >> 
> >>    The proxy server received an invalid response from an upstream server.
> >>    The proxy server could not handle the request POST /sparql.
> >> 
> >>    Reason: DNS lookup failure for: data.semanticweb.org
> >> 
> >>    Apache/2.2.3 (Debian) DAV/2 SVN/1.4.2 PHP/5.2.0-8+etch16 mod_ssl/2.2.3
> >>    OpenSSL/0.9.8c Server at data.semanticweb.org Port 80
> >> 
> >> (appears to be a reverse proxy at data.semanticweb.org)
> >> 
> >> I think I prefer people food...
> >> 
> >> Cheers,
> >> -w
> >> 
> >> 
> > 
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
David Booth, Ph.D.
http://dbooth.org/

Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect those of his employer.

Received on Friday, 4 January 2013 22:44:45 UTC