SweoIG/TaskForces/InfoGathering/Discussion

From W3C Wiki

This are a few notes that illustrate some of the design rationale above, they are edited and cut by LeoSauermann and moved over here by DannyAyers

PasqualePopolizio: I think that "limited, high-quality lists are of much greater value than comprehensive lists for educating and reaching out to people who are not already Semantic Web believers" is possible only by continuous managing of the lists and information. My experience in WAI Education & Outreach Working Group (EOWG) is that we are continuously creating and managing tutorials, lists, tools. For example, there is a list for accessibility evaluation tools. Shadi Abou-Zahra is coordinator and responsible of the list. The list of Web accessibility evaluation tools is stored in RDF/XML format, and can be reused on other Web sites. And this is for Web Accessibility, that with WCAG 2.0 and ATAG 2.0 are in a stable and durable path. So I think that the only way to ensure usability, coherent update, and relevance to our work is to have control on list and information in the course of time, after Febr 2008. But I know this is, at the moment, impossible, because the SWEO Charter; the only alternative is a stable Education and Outreach WG for Semantic Web, like WAI EO.

Kingsley Idehen: In a nutshell, ODS supports the Semantic Bank API (the server aspect of Piggy Bank), my focal point is that an openly accessible Graph is a great data source for Piggy Bank (which will auto-discovery the RDF content when it encounters visits the ODS Data Space that I expose) and other RDF data presentation tools. I just want us to seperate RDF Data Sources from RDF Tools (e.g. An Ajax based SPARQL QBE; Screenshot and SPARQL Protocol Results URL). Although ODS offers functionality on the Client & Server fronts, I believe the realm of preference should be for Users & User Agents to choose. At the end of the day, the ODS Data Space (an RDF Data Source) is simply a URI in its own right :-)

Personally, I prefer this second option. I think that limited, high-quality lists are of much greater value than comprehensive lists for educating and reaching out to people who are not already Semantic Web believers. A developer wishing to try out SW technologies for a new project will fare better with a list of the top 10 tools to implement SW solutions rather than a comprehensive list of hundreds of tools in various states of maturity. A LOB-manager wishing to familiarize herself with the SW world would likely prefer a select list of the top 3 SW-for-business books or presentations than a comprehensive list of scores aimed at various audiences and in various degrees of polish. Of course, such showcases could link to comprehensive lists, so perhaps we can have our cake and eat it too...