- From: Markus Krötzsch <markus.kroetzsch@cs.ox.ac.uk>
- Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2012 09:16:53 +0000
- To: Dieter Fensel <dieter.fensel@sti2.at>
- CC: Yury Katkov <katkov.juriy@gmail.com>, Semantic Web <semantic-web@w3.org>, Semantic MediaWiki users <semediawiki-user@lists.sourceforge.net>, Linked Data community <public-lod@w3.org>
Dear Dieter, thanks a lot for your offer. This is clearly something where STI International would be an ideal partner to join forces with. I will come back to you with more concrete proposals. But at first I want to make sure that we have taken all technical measures to minimize the remaining manual effort. Regards, Markus On 12/01/12 23:11, Dieter Fensel wrote: > Dear Markus and Yury, > > I think you make a very important point. Actually STI International > could provide > (modest) financial and personal support on helping on the issue. If this > is viewed > as a good proposal we could follow up on this. > > Many greetings, > > Dieter > > At 06:43 PM 1/12/2012, Markus Krötzsch wrote: >> Hi Yuri, >> >> let us take this to one mailing list semantic-web@w3.org, as this is >> the list that is most involved (please drop the others when you reply). >> >> As the technical maintainer of the site, I largely agree with your >> assessment. In spite of the very high visibility of the site (and >> perceived authority), the active editing community is not big. This is >> a problem especially given the significant and continued spam attacks >> that the site is under due to its high visibility (I just recently >> changed the captcha system and rolled back thousands of edits, yet it >> seems they are already breaking through again, though in smaller >> numbers). >> >> I do not want to blame anybody for the state of affairs: most of us do >> not have the time to contribute significant content to such sites. >> However, given the extraordinary visibility of the site, we should all >> perceive this as a major problem (to the extent that we attach our >> work to the label "semantic web" in any way). >> >> So what can be done? >> >> (1) Freeze the wiki. A weaker version of this is: allow users only to >> edit after they were manually added to a group of trusted users (all >> humans welcome). This would require somebody to manage these >> permissions but would allow existing projects/communities to continue >> to use the site. >> >> (2) Re-enforce spam protection on the wiki. Maybe this could be done, >> but the site is targeted pretty heavily. Standard captchas like >> ReCaptcha are thus getting broken (spammers do have an effective >> infrastructure for this), but maybe non-standard captchas could work >> better. This is a task for the technical maintainers (i.e., me and the >> folks at AIFB Karlsruhe where the site is hosted). >> >> (3) Clean the wiki. Whether frozen or not, there is a lot of spam >> already. Something needs to be done to get rid of it. This requires >> (easy but tedious) manual effort. Some stakeholders need to be found >> to provide basic workforce (e.g., by hiring a student to help with >> spam deletion). >> >> (4) Restore the wiki. Update the main pages (about technologies and >> active projects) to reflect a current and/or timeless state that we >> would like new readers to see. This again needs somebody to push it, >> and for writing pages about topics like SPARQL one would need some >> expertise. This is a challenge for the community. >> >> I am willing to invest /some/ time here to help with the above, but >> (3) and (4) requires support from more people. On the other hand, >> there are probably hardly more than 20 or 30 *essential* content pages >> that we are talking about here, plus many pages about projects and >> people that one should ask the stakeholders to review. So one might be >> able to make this into a shining entry point to the semantic web in a >> week of work ... together with (1) and (2) above, the invested work >> would remain valuable for a long time. >> >> Cheers >> >> Markus >> >> >> >> On 12/01/12 10:43, Yury Katkov wrote: >>> Hi everyone! >>> >>> What is the current status of the semanticweb.org >>> <http://semanticweb.org> website? It used to be the main wiki about the >>> semantic web, it has a lot of cool and useful information about >>> everything. But now it seems abandoned. I mean, there are about 30 real >>> writers who update the information about their projects an write >>> articles, but they do something like 30% of changes. The other 70% is >>> spam! >>> >>> Are there guys who support the website? >>> Who manages the community, are there any plans of creating projects and >>> articles about SW? Is there community at all? >>> >>> In my opinion if this great website suppose to be alive the first goal >>> is to find volunteers who'll help administrator to combat spam (with >>> bots, extensions and editing policies) and support the new activities >>> and projets on the wiki. (I'm ready to be one of them). >>> If this wiki lived only in the past when it was a big hype around >>> Semantic Web topics and now without a big funding nobody wants to use it >>> - wouldn't it better to be frozen? >>> >>> I appreciate and admire people who started up the wiki. Please, don't >>> let it be the rotting memorial to the past of the Semantic Web. >>> ----- >>> Sincerely yours, >>> Yury Katkov, WikiVote llc -- Dr. Markus Kroetzsch Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford Room 306, Parks Road, OX1 3QD Oxford, United Kingdom +44 (0)1865 283529 http://korrekt.org/
Received on Friday, 13 January 2012 09:17:36 UTC