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w3c / EasierRDF

Making RDF easy enough for most developers
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No clear entry point #6

Open dbooth-boston opened 5 years ago

dbooth-boston commented 5 years ago

"Compare "How do I write React" Google results with "How do I write RDF" Google results. React's first hit[3] is served by its authority (reactjs.org). It links to a description that is compelling, welcoming, and relatively easily scanned. . . . RDF's first hit is hosted by w3schools.com[4] and feels scanty" https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2018Nov/0229.html

IDEA: Canonical documentation

"There is a canonical documentation and jumping in point for communities like React, and the documentation is very good, particularly for beginners. Does rdf have any of these things? Where is the starting point for RDF -- I don't even know -- W3C specs -- that is not the same ease of documentation for a self taught developer as it would be for an academic." https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2018Nov/0136.html

dbooth-boston commented 5 years ago

"I propose that we make a W3C community-maintained website for this purpose, and use a github repo -- to be created -- to drive it, such as: https://github.com/w3c/rdf " https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2018Dec/0127.html

dbooth-boston commented 5 years ago

Some comments from Henry Story:

"For questions and answers that can have an answer I would like for the moment to https://opendata.stackexchange.com/ https://opendata.stackexchange.com/ with links to the tags that are relevant to our community namely rdf, sparql, linked-data, semantic-web"

"We need to suggest a few other tags perhaps that would be of use. It would be good to have some tag for publication."

"For questions that are open, this mailing list would be good, or a forum that is good at leaving questions open, in the sense explained by Floridi in "What is a Philosophical Question?"

"There should be a section on academic papers specializing in this, and conferences, with perhaps a feed that people can subscribe to that collates all of them, so people know both which conferences to go to, or where the specialists are they could approach to answer their questions."

awwright commented 5 years ago

This is something I've been interested in developing, but I would like to note one difference between React and RDF, in that React does one thing: It is a library that generates a document from data in an event loop; whereas RDF is a data model targeted at many different use cases.

My idea of what this looks like is more along the lines of a recipe book: "How do I embed navigation information with RDF?" "How do I query a list of items with RDF?" and so on.

ontoconsult commented 5 years ago

Based on my own experiences there is definitely a need for a central source of information related to RDF, with subsources for the different directly related standards like RDFa and use cases. A simple problem I always had, and still have at times, is that every standard seems to have its own rules for the composition of IDs. And what on earth could be the difference between rdfs:Class and owl:Class. These are problems that most of you cannot imagine because you have grown up in this RDF world. So when you experts write something for laymen, I will give my comments as layman. To illustrate how, for a layman, complex this all is I attach a graphlike diagram in which I tried to make visual how all these concepts are interrelated. schema-basis-2008-03-03

dbooth-boston commented 5 years ago

@ontoconsult, wow!

dbooth-boston commented 5 years ago

Melvin Carvalho wrote:

I just came across this : https://github.com/semantalytics/awesome-semantic-web Maybe a good start?

dbooth-boston commented 5 years ago

Nice! For a long time Mike Bergman has also maintained a database of RDF-related tools, though a number of the tools on his list are now outdated: http://www.mkbergman.com/sweet-tools/

I am still wondering if there is enough interest to create a community-maintained repo under W3C for this purpose. So far I have heard agreement about the need for such a resource, but no concrete offers to help create and maintain it. I am willing to help, but I don't want to ask W3C to create such a repo unless I know that at least 3 others are willing to contribute.

If anyone is willing to help, please say so by leaving a comment here.

mkbergman commented 5 years ago

I would be willing to check activities for my existing listing and to possibly update them. However, I do not think I want to continue in a maintainer mode.

iherman commented 5 years ago

I am still wondering if there is enough interest to create a community-maintained repo under W3C for this purpose.

Just a word of warning... many years ago (in my previous life:-) I have set up a community wiki site at:

https://www.w3.org/2001/sw/wiki/Main_Page

I had two goals when doing that:

It was/is a Semantic Wiki, which had the advantage of providing all kinds of tools to cross-reference things, categorize entries, and even give the possibility to generate linked data from the content.

Since I am not in charge anymore, I do not follow the evolution. It is still operational (I see some modifications from earlier this year on, say, Jena), but I do not think it was an overall success. It would be interesting to analyze why such sites (this was not the only one, that is for sure) did not really succeed in general; this may help us to avoid pitfalls for any new endeavor.

Some of my own recollections on this wiki's problems:

I hope this helps...

awwright commented 5 years ago

I think this would be a good place to share what I'm working on: a framework for websites and especially wikis. It is like Semantic Mediawiki in some of its capabilities; it collects RDF information from the RDFa pages of the website (and possibly other sources), and can build tables of RDFa documents by filling in placeholders/variables where RDFa properties would be expected.

For example, this table of HTTP headers is built using a query: https://fullstack.wiki/http/http-headers

Here is the source code for that table: https://github.com/awwright/fullstackwiki/blob/ebab383f8c3308277982eea8e09e85bab5e6ce13/web/http/http-headers.html

Note how the generated document is an RDFa document that contains all the RDF statements used to build the document: the rendered document is partially isomorphic with the data store!

Anyone can check out the source code and build the website themselves: https://github.com/awwright/fullstackwiki. Several other repositories host libraries that support this, you can check the dependency list and my repository list for some of them.

I think this website would be a good fit for this task. I intend for it to be device-, developer-, and platform- neutral, and focus on best practices for accessible Web applications. I'd like to add content to this site focusing on Semantic Web technology.

To do this, we need to figure out exactly who the audience is, then come up with a structure of how it should look.

First, I ask about audience because I don't want to cannibalize the audience of the specifications themselves: Implementors should refer to the specifications, and not secondhand descriptions. However, my view is that specifications define should stick to normative requirements, and then put non-normative guidelines and logical conclusions in a website or wiki. We take this approach with JSON Schema; we publish Internet-Drafts for normative behavior, and describe design motivations and provide examples on the official website.

Second is the outline. We need to describe to developers why they should adopt RDF at all, and what problems it solves. Often RDF solves purely hypothetical problems instead of actual technical ones faced by a company.

So, I'd guess the outline list the problems that RDF aims to solve, then a technology or solution used to solve it.

I take this approach in a document I wrote describing how OAuth works: https://fullstack.wiki/oauth/index — note how it describes a single, narrow problem (e.g. how can a machine authenticate with a username/password), then presents the solution (use Authorization: Basic), then introduces another problem and its solution (passwords are expensive/insecure, use session tokens), and so on, until the entirety of OAuth (plus its foundations) are described.

But I'm having trouble coming up with a coherent, similar list of "problems that RDF solves". Things like 5-Star Linked Data describe very nicely how RDF is good for the Web, but why does it help e.g. me or my organization?

I think we need to describe some of the tooling available, and develop more & better tooling (see the other issues on this repository), in order to be able to justify how publishing RDF can solve important problems for the publisher.

I think I have a vague idea of what an outline might look like, but I'd like to see if other people have any good ideas before I spoil your minds with my own. Any ideas?

dbooth-boston commented 5 years ago

Collecting some comments from the mailing list:

From https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2019Mar/0068.html

RDF needs a central website for newcomers. But how should it be funded and administered? My thoughts so far:

  • Community engagement is essential, but a wiki-like model that is entirely community driven would not work. Multiple attempts along those lines have already been made, and they have become abandonware after their main contributors moved on to other activities.

  • Curation is essential. The site should not simply hold a long list of potential tools. It needs to guide users more selectively through the jungle, by recommending specific sets of tools that are most likely to make the user successful. Ideally the site should also point out alternative tools.

  • Tool selection is a judgement call, and different people will not all make the same choices for a given use case. Nonetheless, such judgement calls are extremely helpful to newcomers. Therefore, we need to figure out the right community-driven mechanisms for informing or making these judgement calls. (As an example, judgement calls like this are made routinely for every release of Red Hat or Ubuntu when those organizations decide which packages to include. What process do they use?)

  • Curation adds crucial value, but it also costs real money (or time). Web hosting costs are trivial in comparison. How should the site be funded? As a non-profit, from contributions? Vendors and big RDF users might be convinced to donate. What should they get in return? Exposure? Some advertising?

  • If ads are included, they must be relevant, unobtrusive and have no animation or sound.

  • Diversity of use cases. Because of the wide variety of RDF use cases, it would be best to provide different tracks for different kinds of use cases, such as:

    • Content organization by metadata (for libraries, etc.)

    • Data integration (multiple data sources & data models)

    • OWL reasoning (e.g., with OBO Foundry ontologies)

  • How to balance free and open source with commercial interests? The main focus should be on free and open source software: a newcomer should be quickly successful using only free and open source software. But pointers to commercial tools and services should be considered also, both to help users find them, and to have vendor support of the site. However, the commercial aspect must be managed and balanced properly, to prevent the site from smelling like yet another marketing ploy.

From https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2019Mar/0069.html

The “no animation” on ads seem like a poison pill. I don’t mind ads on YouTube channels, for example. Waiting 5 seconds to hit skip is usually a price I’m happy to pay.

From https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2019Mar/0070.html

My ideal "central website" for RDF newcomers would be something like the xml CoverPages (http://xml.coverpages.org). . . . What's needed is a cookbook approach, or pattern collection. In the latter category, there's already a fine resource, http://patterns.dataincubator.org/book/.

From https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2019Mar/0071.html

W3C already offers free online courses in partnership with edX, see: https://www.edx.org/school/w3cx

From https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2019Mar/0073.html

One funding source might actually be existing education institutions.

For instance, Ghent University is paying me to teach about the Web, so with that budget, I decided to create an open course (same effort, but much wider reach). RDF part at https://rubenverborgh.github.io/WebFundamentals/semantic-web/

I have another budget from my Uni to turn this into a MOOC.

Perhaps if several such budgets are combined, we can do something really big.

From https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2019Mar/0076.html

I want resources that help people get started with Linked Data. RDF doesn’t really interest me, and is only incidental to the Linked Data goodness and infrastructure that I find so useful.

dbooth-boston commented 5 years ago

The Ubuntu and Debian communities are much bigger than the RDF communities, but I found information about their governance and decision-making processes.

Ubuntu governance: https://community.ubuntu.com/t/governance/332

Debian constitution: https://www.debian.org/devel/constitution Voting information: https://www.debian.org/vote/

dbooth-boston commented 5 years ago

MDN Web Docs (formerly MDN) is an example of outstanding community-fueled online documentation, though they do also have a paid staff. It is run by Mozilla, but I have not yet figured out exactly how it fits into the Mozilla Foundation (a non-profit) and the Mozilla Corporation, which is a commercial company wholly owned by the Mozilla Foundation. MDN Web Docs seems to be treated as a Mozilla module, since it is listed on this page. I see also:

Does anyone know more about how the MDN Web Docs organization works, and how decisions are made?

turbomam commented 5 years ago

@ontoconsult was your core/user-defined/individuals figure above present on the http://www.infowebml.ws website up until recently? I remember seeing some really useful cheat-sheets there in the past but I can't seem to reach them now.

answering my own question: it seems like the original can only be found in internet archives now: https://web.archive.org/web/20071011172027/http://www.infowebml.ws/website/graphical-representations.htm

ontoconsult commented 5 years ago

Hi Mark,

I can only guess, therefore I attach as much as e-mail is willing to carry forward. It’s old stuff.

Please let me know whether or not that cheat-sheet was amongst them. If not, please describe it.

Regards,

Hans

15926.org http://15926.org/

From: Mark A. Miller notifications@github.com Sent: dinsdag 20 augustus 2019 19:40 To: w3c/EasierRDF EasierRDF@noreply.github.com Cc: ontoconsult hans.teijgeler@quicknet.nl; Mention mention@noreply.github.com Subject: Re: [w3c/EasierRDF] No clear entry point (#6)

@ontoconsult https://github.com/ontoconsult was your core/user-defined/individuals figure above present on the http://www.infowebml.ws website up until recently? I remember seeing some really useful cheat-sheets there int eh past but I can't seem to reach them now.

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/w3c/EasierRDF/issues/6?email_source=notifications&email_token=ABHVQVNVIUSLYISKTGEOMXLQFQT7RA5CNFSM4GI65EBKYY3PNVWWK3TUL52HS4DFVREXG43VMVBW63LNMVXHJKTDN5WW2ZLOORPWSZGOD4XC2HA#issuecomment-523119900 , or mute the thread https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABHVQVNCRJ7I4FG6GRDZMRTQFQT7RANCNFSM4GI65EBA .

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asbjornu commented 4 years ago

I find it a bit bewildering reading all the comments made here and not finding a single mention user interface design. The reason the React website is so pleasant and welcoming is not primarily because its technology and domain of application is so much simpler than that of RDF, but because it's a beautifully crafted design created by a highly skilled designer, written by a technical writer and implemented by a competent front-end developer.

Sorry to be frank, but if one or more designers are not at the forefront of whatever content you are going to fill this website with, it is going to fail just like all the other RDF related websites that are in current existence.

asbjornu commented 4 years ago

Does anyone know more about how the MDN Web Docs organization works, and how decisions are made?

@martinthomson, can you perhaps please point us in the right direction?

martinthomson commented 4 years ago

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/MDN/Contribute/Guidelines/Does_this_belong_on_MDN provides some guidance here. Apparently there is a MDN Product Advisory Board, but I don't have a lot of info.