RE: Newsletter & Call for Papers WebSci'18

FWIW, and to anchor the issue in Semantic Web technologies, this review paper (and call to action!) by Christoph Lange, from 2010
http://www.semantic-web-journal.net/content/ontologies-and-languages-representing-mathematical-knowledge-semantic-web is interesting. Also note comments from the reviewers (in 2010) such as – “…at the beginning of MKM several authors have proposed or tried integration with the Semantic Web. In practice, the most serious efforts were all abandoned about five years ago, for several reasons.

From: Harry Halpin [mailto:hhalpin@ibiblio.org]
Sent: Thursday, 22 February, 2018 09:50
To: Axel Polleres <axel@polleres.net>
Cc: Sarven Capadisli <info@csarven.ca>; semantic-web@w3.org
Subject: Re: Newsletter & Call for Papers WebSci'18


On Wed, Feb 21, 2018 at 7:25 PM Axel Polleres <axel@polleres.net<mailto:axel@polleres.net>> wrote:
Except you miss that Sarven is one of the few people who does put some real work into making HTML publishing possible, I would like to add in his defence (which is also why I do respect his strategy ;-))

I disagree. We did HTML publishing in Web conference series and it barely worked due to MathML/Latex problem. Dokeli does not address and Sarven doesn’t even seem to understand problem, as he conflated the requirements of publishing a blog post with scientific papers. Latex is still far superior. When he or anyone comes back with something up to par with Latex for math, then I will take him seriously. Otherwise it’s basically spam for a project that doesn’t work yet, even if it’s well-intended spam.

I would suggest rather than spamming this list, Sarven work on something that really solves the problem (i.e. spend some time converting real papers and datasets over to a web-friendly form) to understand the poribkrm -  and THEN advertises it rather than being a second-rate ideologue


just my two cents,
Axel

On 21.02.2018, at 09:57, Harry Halpin <hhalpin@ibiblio.org<mailto:hhalpin@ibiblio.org>> wrote:

As I have pointed out many times, lack of LaTeX support for math makes HTML publishing for scientific papers a non-starter, and people who do not believe this is a problem must either not publish much or not publish papers with math. Right now cutting-edge is Tex2Html that hasn’t really been updated in 10 years. MathML is trying to force a dead XML paradigm and has little browser support. So I basically consider it a solvable problem that requires real work, but until I see real work I consider Sarven’s posts to basically be pointless spam and borderline trolling.

Since I have no desire to see spam in my inbox, I will unsubscribe from this mailing list quite shortly likely.

On Wed, Feb 21, 2018 at 11:37 AM Sarven Capadisli <info@csarven.ca<mailto:info@csarven.ca>> wrote:
Hi Hugh, and everyone.

This is a great query, which I'd like to address:

On 2018-02-21 11:25, Hugh Glaser wrote:
> I am not sure what a public response of this sort to the CFP achieves (rather than a private message to the CFP poster), other than an attempt to publicly shame, which doesn't seem appropriate on the Semantic Web mailing list.

The real target of these messages is not you, me, or even the seniors,
professors, directors, conference organisers, programme committees, and
so on.

This is for the *next generation* of researchers and developers who are
following along or will hopefully read this up one day. They are the
ones who will be the change. We are only setting the stage for them to
follow through.

Of course I do hope that these ideas and the problems we are dealing
with resonate with more people. Hence, a plea for the "seniors" to
permit their "junior" colleagues to push forward. To grow their team
with a different set of ideals and awareness! Many already have for a
long time, and many are making that shift.

Neither do I actually expect these conferences/journals that have kept
their approach for so long to change overnight. As long as researchers
are constrained in how they communicate their knowledge, and how that
knowledge can be disseminated, no amount of activism here or elsewhere
will change that.

The purpose of these threads is purely about creating awareness and
building a mental infrastructure.

One by-product of all these conversations is the archival and
documentation of the state of affairs. The mere existence of this thread
shows that we are talking about this stuff, some of us are still
concerned about it, some of us are making our little contributions to
improve things.

I'm thankful for this community and the feedback that I've received. It
has indeed help me immensely - in more ways than I can express here - to
mature my ideas and join them with the others, as well as the support to
continue to pursue my principles. The evolution of these mailing list
threads serve as documentation and evaluation. It is not unique to this
mailing list; it has been going on over countless mailing lists over
several decades. If the ideas at their core are not sound, that would've
been clear by now.

And regarding the repetitiveness of my responses to CfPs over the years.
This is true. I like to keep these issues in peoples' consciousness. I'm
troubled by the typical one-way communication that these announcements
are made and their effects on the community. There tends to be little
discussion about community practices regarding conferences, and the real
decisions tend to made by a small circle of people that are content to
maintain the status-quo. I'd like to continually remind people to get
involved with influencing these processes wherever they can; to keep it
on the radar, and remind people that these processes can be questioned.

> Yes, Sarven, you are a valued member of the Semantic Web community, and so we are all interested in what you are doing, and this is the list you should be using to share it (that is genuine - there is no irony or sarcasm intended).

Thank you. Indeed, scholarly communication *is* precisely what I'm
working on. Critiquing assumptions and norms conferences in the
[Semantic] Web domain is me sharing my ideas and their evolution with
the list. They have matured, and they've had some impact - however
small. I am more than happy to take the technical aspects up a notch.

As others have pointed out, we can't separate technology from its social
implications. The Web is inherently social, as are academic processes,
and this mailing list is no exception! Voicing these ideas and prompting
others to do so is as important (if not more so) than developing tooling
and standards.

Thanks once more to all who have continued this discussion with their
various perspectives. These are all steps forward.

-Sarven
http://csarven.ca/#i