Ditching the Semantic Web

http://inamidst.com/whits/2008/ditching

by newton • 18 years ago

26 12 18 years ago

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

th0ma5• 18 years ago

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

quasimojo2• 18 years ago

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.

pius3• 18 years ago

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.

orib• 18 years ago

Even disregarding the authentication aspect, there's laziness. People (at least myself, and I presume many/most others) can't be arsed to take the time to add tags that nobody will ever really see. It's a whole lot of work to tag more than the minimum.

quasimojo2• 18 years ago

That's (mostly) true if there's no trust model

there isn't one.

brandnewlow• 18 years ago

I tend to agree. Any system that requires people to "do it right" in order for the standard to be useful seems iffy.

TweedHeads• 18 years ago

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

Ditching the Semantic Web

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