Re: Newsletter & Call for Papers WebSci'18

On Wed, Feb 21, 2018 at 9:37 PM Axel Polleres <axel@polleres.net> wrote:

> well,
>
> cf. https://dokie.li/docs#html-math
> https://twitter.com/csarven/status/908711815215026177
>
> this project doesn't look like abandoned 5 years ago to me...  all I was
> saying is that I buy into Sarven seriously putting work into that which
> should be acknowledged.
>

I believe acknowledgement can come via making a working product that has
real users. If successful, one can even make a company or non-profit around
such an initiative.

 Another half-baked and barely working Semantic Web tool whose author is
basically spamming my inbox in a desperate bid for attention strikes me as
both a waste of my inbox space and not a productive use of anyone’s time,
including his. Flaky research projects, sometimes disguised as W3C
standards have in general given the Semantiv Web a bad name in most
developer and investor circles, and users honestly haven’t adopted
anything. So the future is not looking bright, and spam doesn’t help.

Or Sarven can write it up and publish it using a conference that accepts
HTML, and get acknowledgment via citations.

Reasonably, in terms of interop with HTML, pandoc has been much useful, and
has many many more users. I use it regularly, and it may be useful to add
“semantics” to that.

Although I agree we should get rid of Springer, Elsevier, and the rest of
these scammy publishing houses, I would appreciate it if Sarven woukd stop
demanding scientific conferences use his tool until it works reasonably
well, which for serious consideration would require latex or equivalent for
math. For myself, I believe open access is as good as we can demand now
until tooling is better. Current tooling issues for HTML publishing for
scientific access has little to do with semantics and much more to do with
support for math, bibliographies, and the like. All solvable problems, but
none requiring daily spamming and trolling.



>
>
>
> On 21.02.2018, at 15:26, <Simon.Cox@csiro.au> <Simon.Cox@csiro.au> wrote:
>
> 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-webis
> 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 <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> 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> 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> 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
>
>