The slashdot[1] effect has been around for a long time.
Auto mirroring would be nice but at the same time it leaves a lot of open questions about content ownership, ability of the content owner to edit, monetize etc. The New York Times would not be happy if HN links were automatically mirrored and I imagine they'd be quick to protect their rights on that front.
Even just a summary? We've got nothing. The site is down and even the archive.org link above isn't responding.
My guess just based on title is something along the lines of silos are bad so lets make a better silo. But, our silo will be a really nice silo. Forgetting that's what everyone has been doing forever. The wheel of IT rotates forever and this is a very old idea that fits the title.
Nope, it actually says that this silo is empty, let's go to that other one that's more popular and about to be standardized instead of making 2 standards.
We've all been talking about "The Semantic Web" for a very long time. I would love to be proven wrong but it all reminds me of EDI[1] which for more then 30 years has tried to develop standards around data formats. I think all of these efforts so far have been doomed to die a horrible death because they don't have an obvious benefit for those involved in the massive investment required to get it right. I think theoretically it's wonderful to imagine a world of infinitely parseable machine consumable information. If anything the robots will appreciate it when they take over the world. Meanwhile I'm not convinced that Humans can attach enough value to the effort to make it worthwhile. But I could be wrong, this wouldn't be the first time and I hope not the last time. :-)
I believe any "universal ontology" like this is theoretically impossible in the same way that finding an isomorphism between integers and reals is impossible. I am also struck by how appealing everyone finds such classifications.
But then i am something of an existentialist and doubt the transcendent reality of logic and reason.
While having nothing to do with "existentialism", you might appreciate this. It's the introduction to a book originally published in France in the late 70s, but that might just serve as a world wide web manifesto...
The Semantic Web should remind you of every schema and interchange format you have ever seen. That's its purpose. The graph is a very versatile data structure conceptually.
The Semantic Web cannot die because it is multiple concepts and no single concept at all. The Semantic Web is ideas not (just) implementations, and ideas never die.
Worst of all, for most businesses there is no benefit in sharing their data.
And if there is, only consumers of data care about standardized schemas and
methods of access. For producers, standardization means customers can more
easily switch to competitors. Also, deviation from standards should be expected
because producers of data want to have unique selling points. The schema.org
stuff is useful, it lets companies use their web site as a decentralized
phone book by adding metadata for Google (Maps), e.g. phone numbers, addresses
and the like. It's the Semantic Web of opening hours.
From a product standpoint, schemas are small technical details with relatively
low influence on the outcome: it just needs to work. Unless you're operating at
extreme scale, you should put much more work into whatever you actually do with
the data.
Semantic Web people talk about the Semantic Web because it's what they do.
They don't just build X, they create an ontology to build X, which somehow
makes X better. And, most likely, slower.
This article is saying the Microdata spec for semantic markup is dying (schema.org shows Microdata, RDFa and JSON-LD). RDFa/RDFa Lite is still active.
Having worked with both Microdata and RDFa formats, I'm glad Microdata is dying-RDFa Lite is much simpler to implement. The Microdata spec is unnecessarily verbose and, as the article said, RDFa Lite can do everything Microdata can do & more.
Hopefully having a single spec in the future can cut down the confusion and increase adoption of semantic markup.
For anyone interested in the alternative, check out RDFa[0]. They seem to be functionally equivalent and are supported by all major search providers. [1] (if down, see web archive version [2])
Not necessarily. Google search is one application for metadata, definitely, but it is by no means the only one and nor is it the most interesting imho.
The same page also points out that microformats and RDFa are supported by Google too. I wonder whether the recommended status of microdata on that page is because it was proposed and edited at the W3C by a Google employee (that's pure speculation on my part btw).
20 comments
[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 58.7 ms ] threadFound this: http://web.archive.org/web/20140719161748/http://manu.sporny...
@pg do you think having automatic archived mirrors linked on all submission would be detrimental to linked articles ?
Auto mirroring would be nice but at the same time it leaves a lot of open questions about content ownership, ability of the content owner to edit, monetize etc. The New York Times would not be happy if HN links were automatically mirrored and I imagine they'd be quick to protect their rights on that front.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdotted
My guess just based on title is something along the lines of silos are bad so lets make a better silo. But, our silo will be a really nice silo. Forgetting that's what everyone has been doing forever. The wheel of IT rotates forever and this is a very old idea that fits the title.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_data_interchange
But then i am something of an existentialist and doubt the transcendent reality of logic and reason.
http://interconnected.org/home/more/2005/06/1000Plateaus00Rh...
(You seem philosophically-minded)
The Semantic Web cannot die because it is multiple concepts and no single concept at all. The Semantic Web is ideas not (just) implementations, and ideas never die.
From a product standpoint, schemas are small technical details with relatively low influence on the outcome: it just needs to work. Unless you're operating at extreme scale, you should put much more work into whatever you actually do with the data.
Semantic Web people talk about the Semantic Web because it's what they do. They don't just build X, they create an ontology to build X, which somehow makes X better. And, most likely, slower.
Having worked with both Microdata and RDFa formats, I'm glad Microdata is dying-RDFa Lite is much simpler to implement. The Microdata spec is unnecessarily verbose and, as the article said, RDFa Lite can do everything Microdata can do & more.
Hopefully having a single spec in the future can cut down the confusion and increase adoption of semantic markup.
[0]: http://rdfa.info/
[1]: http://manu.sporny.org/2012/mythical-differences/
[2]: http://web.archive.org/web/20140719161748/http://manu.sporny...
I have no horse in this race, but isn't Google the search engine kinda the deciding factor here?
The same page also points out that microformats and RDFa are supported by Google too. I wonder whether the recommended status of microdata on that page is because it was proposed and edited at the W3C by a Google employee (that's pure speculation on my part btw).