

Ditching the Semantic Web - newton
http://inamidst.com/whits/2008/ditching

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zitterbewegung
Maybe it would be better if we try a more top down approach generating data
semantically?

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th0ma5
this perspective is 2 years older than this post... even RDF people agree that
the semantic web lower case is taking hold

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quasimojo
no mechanism that allows or even requires content authors to create their own
metadata will ever take off. lets go back in time to 1996 and look at the meta
tag. the idea was that people would describe pages with terms like "cancer
research" or "fly fishing" but instead used terms like "pussy cunt fuck cum
orgy". why? because people figured out very quickly what people were looking
for on the web and crafted meta tag keyphrases apprpriately

the whole point of quality search engines like google is to circumvent this
garbage....i.e. circumvent the semantic web

microformats just moves the problem into a new area of the text. another flop.

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pius
_no mechanism that allows or even requires content authors to create their own
metadata will ever take off._

That's (mostly) true if there's no trust model. Once you insert some sort of
trust or authorization model, this problem gets mitigated pretty quickly. The
most obvious counterexample to your point is the rich ecosystem of API-based
mashups. Mashups exist as integration points for multiple content sources
where content authors provide their own metadata.

While there's a lot of talk these days about the idea of "semantic search
engines," most practical uses of the semantic web are actually just souped up
mashups -- solutions to integration problems combined with some lightweight
AI.

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quasimojo
_That's (mostly) true if there's no trust model_

there isn't one.

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pius
_there isn't one._

That's about as true for mashups as it is for the semantic web; in both cases,
there is not an "official" trust model used across the web, though it's
obviously possible for semantic web providers to do what every other API
provider does and simply use their reputation. For example, what makes you
trust the data you get from any API at all, if not for the provider's
reputation? I do agree that there should be a more uniform approach in order
to get wide usage of the technology beyond the enterprise, academia, and
medicine.

This apparent lack of an official trust model won't be the case for long with
POWDER [1] on the horizon. POWDER is on its way to becoming a ratified W3C
standard and it makes steps to address the idea of a "web of trust." Who knows
what kind of traction this will get in the near term, but I think it's a step
in the right direction.

[1] <http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-powder-primer-20080815>

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wheels
Right, but who trusts the W3C? ;-)

~~~
pius
hehe, good question :P

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TweedHeads
SemWeb and Facebook

Say you want to list name:knows:name, would you rather:

a. use /friends.rdf

b. use /GetFriendsList.php and get a JSON list of friends

