Re: objections to webmention

On 6 June 2016 at 04:41, Sandro Hawke <sandro@w3.org> wrote:

>
>
> On June 5, 2016 2:14:49 PM PDT, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >On 5 June 2016 at 22:20, Robert Sanderson <azaroth42@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> While I agree with Melvin's design aesthetics, I acknowledge that's
> >what
> >> they are.  There's no _functional_ problem with the current spec, and
> >while
> >> JSON-LD and URIs seem like a good practice, there's nothing written
> >in
> >> stone that says Thou Must Use URIs.
> >>
> >> I disagree however that it's a general purpose messaging framework.
> >It's
> >> explicitly (per the one sentence introduction):
> >>   "[...] a Webmention is a notification that one URL links to
> >another."
> >>
> >>
> >> Basing any understanding of webmention on the non-normative
> >extensions
> >> referenced seems like a trap to be avoided.  I (personally) would
> >simply
> >> remove Appendix B and focus on the actual value of the main
> >specification.
> >> Extensibility without namespaces at web scale is just impossible, and
> >may
> >> be leading to some of the confusion and design questions.
> >>
> >
> >Well put!
> >
> >So is webmention extensible, or is it not extensible.  I think this
> >could
> >be clearer.
> >
>
> We need to distinguish between centralized extensibility like in html5,
> css, uri schemes, schema.org, http headers, etc, and decentralized
> extensibility, as in RDF or link headers.
>
> Webmention has centralized extensibility.   Activity streams (by using
> json-ld) has decentralized extensibility.
>
> Personally, I feel like decentralized extensibility is a moral and
> psychological issue, but I'm well aware that the case for decentralized
> extensibility is weak.    The vision is of a wonderfully free and open yet
> interoperable ecosystem, but in practice that doesn't seem to happen. By
> far the greatest adoption of RDF happened when it was coupled with
> schema.org, with only centralized extensibility.
>

Without wishing to go off topic, on the subject of adoption, I think it's
worth pointing out that facebook open graph is a significant adopter of
linked data / RDF.  Indeed last time I checked all of their user profiles
and graph are available as RDF.  There have also been other adopters of RDF
orders of magnitude bigger than the usage I see of webmention.  I'd welcome
numbers, but from what I can tell webmention adoption numbers are
statistically insignificant when compared with even minor RDF deployments
e.g.  I think this group is unbalanced by a group representing a user base
in single digits using this technology and having a relatively large voice
in the WG.


>
> Given that, I think webmention is fine having only centralized
> extensibility.
>
>      - Sandro
>
>
> >
> >>
> >> Rob
> >>
> >>
>
>