Re: Linked Data Dogfood circa. 2013

Hi David

you're describing the plain concept of "Open Data". SURE there are
great datasets our tere.Open Data is already a  sucess,it's good and
great and will save lifes if it hasnt done so already (e.g. all this
data now being made available)

However this really has not to do with what i was referring to which
is the failure at OUR specific task: coming up with specifications,
models,clients whatever to technically make 'Open Data on the Web" as
revolutionary as WWW was -  the true killer app of hypertext the "it
all makes sense now".

So with respect to this we failed, so far, OUR task.

Give up? no in my opinion. just lets recognize that asking people to
publish data alone makes no sense and actually its counterproductive
and damaging given the specifications we're asking people to follow
are silly as they dont serve any real purpose.

Something else is needed.

E.g. starting point: what makes the web of data fundamentally
different fromthe Web?  On the web it is indeed often sufficient to
create a web site even a crappy one and you get immediate benefits.
Given there are benefits people do it, period.

IMO a client is missing. or a set of clients, that will do useful
things for non fictional - important enough share of people.

With said clients (giving benefits already when accessing a few marked
up websites, e.g. something that allows you to use rottentomatoes.com
much better because of the markup that's ALREADY on it) then it willbe
PEOPLE writing to webmasters saying "mark it up please otherwise i
cant XY"or webmasters themselves wanting to mark up because then
people with clients willbe able to XY.

Gio

On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 11:44 PM, David Booth <david@dbooth.org> wrote:
> 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 Saturday, 5 January 2013 23:45:55 UTC