[ADTF] next steps / discussion for face to face

hi all,

I had an action [1] from the meeting on 30th September to summarize 
the state of the ADTF before the face to face. This is that action. 
Further down I make some suggestions about how to proceed, and I'd 
appreciate feedback on those, by mail or at the face to face.

What we have so far:
* hand-chosen descriptions of semweb applications and demos
* descriptions written by Fabien or me
* rdf version available:
http://www.w3.org/2000/06/webdata/xslt?xslfile=http%3A%2F%2Fswordfish.rdfweb.org%2Fdiscovery%2F2004%2F06%2Fadtf%2Fadtf.xsl&xmlfile=http%3A%2F%2Fesw.w3.org%2Fmt%2Fesw%2Farchives%2Fcat_applications_and_demos.html&transform=Submit
* only 17 descriptions at present

The RDF format uses GRDDL and XSLT:
http://swordfish.rdfweb.org/discovery/2004/06/adtf/adtf.xsl

from XHTML descriptions:
http://esw.w3.org/mt/esw/archives/cat_applications_and_demos.html

and looks like this:

<rdf:Description>
<dc:title>ADTF: Knowledge Management Platform (KmP)</dc:title>
<dc:description>Knowledge Management Platform (KmP) A Semantic Web 
Service ....
</dc:description>
<dc:date>2003-03</dc:date>
<foaf:homepage 
rdf:resource="http://www-sop.inria.fr/acacia/soft/kmp.html"/>
<dc:creator>
<foaf:Person>
<foaf:name>Fabien Gandon</foaf:name>
<foaf:mbox rdf:resource="mailto:Fabien.Gandon@sophia.inria.fr"/>
<foaf:workplaceHomepage rdf:resource="http://www-sop.inria.fr/acacia/acacia.html"/>
</foaf:Person>
</dc:creator>
<rdfs:seeAlso rdf:resource="http://www-sop.inria.fr/acacia/soft/kmp.html"/>
</rdf:Description>

i.e. it's very simple indeed, and only uses existing vocabularies, but 
is rather underspecified.

We have a couple of problems currently:

* creating these descriptions is a bit boring and fiddly
* so we don't have many of them

However the advantage of the current system is that the applications and 
demos are chosen by a member of the ADTF to appear in the list.

I'd suggest a different approach, that's less time consuming and more 
semwebby and should result in many more descriptions. The suggestion 
is two-fold:

(a) that we use the Description of a Project (DOAP) vocabulary[2] to 
describe the applications and demos (this is a quick change to the 
XSLT)
(b) that we encourage people to describe their own projects

These can then be harvested and displayed in for example, a faceted 
browser e.g. SWED[3].

I see two potential issues. One is that DOAP is quite widely in use and 
we are interested in just semweb applications and demos, not projects in 
general. I think this can be fixed by subclassing doap:project or 
perhaps just by assigning categories (using doap:category).

The other issue is the loss of trust. My personal opinion is that 
usefulness of the increase in projects described would more than 
compensate for this; we could also mitigate the trust issue by including 
some information about the person creating the description, and 
perhaps harvest them only as attachments to certain mailing lists, for 
example (Dan Brickley's suggestion for a similar problem). I'd 
certainly much rather spend my time helping to document using DOAP or 
similar in this context rather than creating descriptions 
myself.

DOAP itself is an interesting community-based vocabulary with several 
tools available for creating the data and good documentation. I think 
that using it - (a) - is probably a good plan. (b) - getting people to 
describe their own projects is more controversial, although is 
consistent with the taskforce description [4].

Any thoughts? Fabien in particular, you've done a lot of the cataloging 
- what do you think?

Libby


[1] ACTION: libby to summarize ADTF before f2f
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swbp-wg/2004Oct/0008.html
[2] http://usefulinc.com/doap/goals
[3] http://www.swed.org.uk/
[4] http://esw.w3.org/topic/SemanticWebBestPracticesTaskForceOnApplicationsAndDemos

Received on Thursday, 14 October 2004 16:18:19 UTC