Re: Newsletter & Call for Papers WebSci'18

Hi Daniel,

> Some of the “confusion” seems to emerge from the fact that many are trying to apply the results of the first (research) to the second (communication)

Well, yes and no.
We can hardly call the billion-dollar industry that is the Web still “research”.

> The Internet, hypertext and web technologies have provided new alternatives for each of these requirements, but these alternatives are still in their infancy, especially when compared to the traditional established technologies.

Your arguments for the three (valid) requirements don't convince me of that though.

> I think this explains why they haven't been widely adopted, even by expert practitioners of the technology itself.

I think the bigger problem here is the valuation
that universities give to print over paper;
I don't think it's a technological issue, as I'll show below.

> Take 1, for example. We have all been trained on how to write sequentially (as Ted Nelson puts it…). Nobody really knows how to write hypertext properly; we don’t even know what are the criteria and parameters to evaluate hypertext as an effective media for communication (of any kind, not only scholarly!). I claim that to use the Web in a really webby way one should author “proper” hypertexts.

Maybe, but that does not make the Web a worse candidate for 1.
>From what you're saying, I deduce that the Web covers all functionality
that print also covers for 1. So it's mature in that regard.

With regard to hypertext, specifically for research,
I think that “clickable” references in articles are a huge leap forward
compared to looking up numbers in a list. And that's just one thing.

> Regarding 2, in addition to the issue above, there are a whole slew of new (social) process alternatives enabled by the technologies, for which again we haven’t yet found a consensus within the community on how to proceed (e.g., reviewing process, identity/authentication, provenance, social networking, etc…). I expect time will show what works, and how.

Well, the reviewing process already happens on the Web,
even for articles that are designed as PDF.
So we got that working.

> Regarding 3, it’s not clear at all how long will the communication made via the new technologies will really last… we see already evidence of link rot, for instance, even for recent content. For example, can we safely assume that the contents made available using the new technologies will be available, accessible and usable 20 years from now? Actually, some may even ask, Is this a real requirement at all?

Web archiving is working well so far.
And one can always print a webpage.

But then again, many of the PDF articles
are not printed anymore either,
so that problem doesn't go away.

(BTW, in this context, do watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4nUe-6Ln-8)



So summarizing, even though your 3 requirements seem valid,
I haven't found a reason in there not to publish in a more webby way,
especially given that the supposedly “print” process already takes places on the Web.

Best,

Ruben

Received on Tuesday, 20 February 2018 20:11:19 UTC