Re: [Dbpedia-discussion] SOPA, Wikipedia, and dbpedia

On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 9:43 AM, Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com> wrote:
> On 1/17/12 10:38 AM, Bryan Burgers wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 17, 2012 at 9:26 AM, Kingsley Idehen<kidehen@openlinksw.com>
>>  wrote:
>>>
>>> On 1/17/12 10:01 AM, Jörn Hees wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> On 17. Jan. 2012, at 15:08, Kingsley Idehen wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> On 1/17/12 8:39 AM, Mischa Tuffield wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Following on from the news that the English Wikipedia is going dark in
>>>>>> opposition to the SOPA/PIPA tomorrow (2012-01-18) given the activity
>>>>>> in the
>>>>>> US [1], I wonder whether we as the Semantic Web Community feel like we
>>>>>> should turn around and turn off dbpedia? What do people think?
>>>>>> Wouldn't that
>>>>>> be a nice show of support to Wikipedia, dbpedia's parent project, I
>>>>>> think so
>>>>>> ...
>>>>
>>>> Note that en.wikipedia.org won't be "turned off", they will have a black
>>>> click through page before being able to access articles.
>>>> While ok (for me) for pages intended for humans, i don't know if it's
>>>> wise
>>>> to do the same for machine accessible data.
>>>
>>>
>>> In the case of DBpedia that means: /page/ links can do similar.
>>>
>>> As for the machine vs human matter, SOPA doesn't make any distinction.
>>> Same
>>> really applies to Linked Data, its all about representation formats for
>>> structured data via description oriented directed graphs.
>>>
>>>
>>>> The machines will get confused.
>>>
>>>
>>> That's part of the point.
>>
>> Except that most machines don't understand SOPA, and won't call their
>> representatives. Although SOPA (and PIPA) affect machines, too, it's
>> the humans that can affect whether the legislation passes. So it's all
>> about informing humans with the hope that they'll take action.
>
>
> The machines are driven by Humans. There's always a human at the end of the
> value chain.

Agreed. And because SOPA is an important issue, we want to surface
information to that human about what it means and what to do about it.
I think we both agree on this.

>> When Wikipedia goes black, there will be information on WHY it has
>> gone black, and what SOPA means to internet users.
>
> Fine, and that can also make its way, via Linked Data mesh to the human at
> the end of the value chain.

Yes, hopefully. What we want to determine is how.

>> If the data portion of DBPedia goes black, there will be no
>> information on WHY it has gone black and there will be no mention of
>> SOPA, so there will be no action taken on the part of humans.
>
> Of course not, it might even be a nice Linked Data implications showcase.
>
>> Yes,
>> humans eventually see the data that the machines get from DBPedia, but
>> if the data portion of DBPedia goes black, the applications that use
>> it as a datasource will probably just say DBPedia is down, or that
>> data is unavailable; no mention will be made about SOPA.
>
>
> Not if done right. The humans at the end of the value chain will know why
> :-)

OK, I think this is the crux of the issue right here. Wikipedia is a
single product. They control the presentation. They'll make sure it's
"done right".

DBPedia isn't really a single product, but rather a data source for
many products. All of those products can "do it right", but DBPedia
can't "do it right" for them.

How about an example. Pretend for a moment that I wrote a website to
display the players who currently play on English Premier League
teams. I query the data for Everton players:
SELECT * WHERE {
  ?teamMember a dbpedia-owl:SportsTeamMember;
      dbpedia-owl:team <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Everton_F.C.>;
      dbpedia-owl:squadNumber ?number;
      dbpedia-owl:position ?position;
      dbpedia-owl:currentMember ?player.

  ?player foaf:name ?name.
}

What can DBPedia do with that query to surface the SOPA issue? Will
returning no data surface the SOPA issue? Probably not. Will returning
an error message that mentions SOPA surface the SOPA issue? That
depends on what each individual product does with the error message.

As an individual product, my team website can surface the issue, via a
blackout or banner or other means. Other products can do the same. But
that's up to each individual product, and unfortunately there's no
good way that DBPedia can surface the issue.

It's the difference between Wikipedia, as a single product, and
DBPedia, as a data source for myriad products, that affects which
action each can take.

Received on Wednesday, 18 January 2012 15:49:35 UTC