Re: centralized vs decentralized extensibility

On June 8, 2016 7:47:28 AM PDT, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
>On 7 June 2016 at 17:03, Kevin Marks <kevinmarks@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> If you are pointing to centralised proprietary silos such as
>> schema.org and facebook OGP as examples of decentralisation I really
>> don't understand what you mean by the term.
>>
>> Just because they are using markup that if you don't look too closely
>> you can claim as RDF does not make them decentralised. This is
>> duckspeak.
>>
>
>So it's been a while since I looked at OGP itself but I seem to recall
>linked data being used.  The point I am trying to make is that facebook
>return RDF / Linked data in their profiles and a ton of other data.
>
>What I have looked at lately is the Facebook graph API.
>
>http://semantic-web-journal.net/sites/default/files/swj282_0.pdf
>
>Schema.org plays nicely with other vocabs, just in the same way that
>AS2
>does, or am I missing something?
>
>What I am trying to get across is that bottom up design scales to the
>whole
>social web even if you have a few centralized curators.  Can anyone
>make a
>serious argument against this, either theoretical or practical?
>

Straw argument.   Even if it were true it wouldn't affect Webmention because it's deployed differently.

The best argument for webmention to use RDF IMHO would be so an LDP container automatically works as part of a webmention endpoint, but LDP hasn't caught on and there are too many other bits that would be missing (e.g. Validation) if you did it that way.   Plus, if you have authentication, as you probably would with LDP, webmention is entirely the wrong protocol.

    - Sandro

>
>>
>> On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 3:06 AM, Melvin Carvalho
>> <melvincarvalho@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Sandro recently made a point in favor of centralized extensibility.
>> >
>> > I would like to argue that this kind of centralization does not
>scale on
>> the
>> > social web.
>> >
>> >> 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.
>> >
>> > I strongly disagree that the case for decentralized extensibility
>is
>> weak.
>> >
>> > Centralized standards have been tried a number or times on the
>social web
>> > and they have almost all failed.  My reasoning is that the whole
>social
>> web
>> > is too vast for some central authority to please everyone.  You can
>only
>> > please a small group, and that leads to balkanization, which is
>what we
>> see
>> > today.
>> >
>> > I do agree it is moral and psychological because it is top down
>decision
>> > making vs bottom up grass roots self organization.
>> >
>> >
>> >> The vision is of a wonderfully free and open yet interoperable
>> ecosystem,
>> >> but in practice that doesn't seem to happen.
>> >
>> > Why do you think this?  The facebook open graph has proliferated.
>> > Schema.org has proliferated.  JSON LD has proliferated.  These are
>all
>> > largely interoperable standards all along the same lines.
>> >
>> >> By far the greatest adoption of RDF happened when it was coupled
>with
>> >> schema.org, with only centralized extensibility.
>> >
>> > 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
>> >
>> > I think the arguments that are being made for centralization are
>just not
>> > accurate.  We've been down this path before in the social web. 
>Hint: it
>> > doesnt work.
>>

Received on Wednesday, 8 June 2016 14:59:12 UTC