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The Downward Spiral of Microdata

manu.sporny.org

11–20 of 21 posts

Re: The Downward Spiral of Microdata

#12
post #9
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdotted

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.

Re: The Downward Spiral of Microdata

#13
post #5

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 theore…

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.

Re: The Downward Spiral of Microdata

#14
post #8

To be clear, is this stating the format as outlined on Schema ( http://schema.org/ ) is dead?

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.

Re: The Downward Spiral of Microdata

#15
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])

[0]: http://rdfa.info/

[1]: http://manu.sporny.org/2012/mythical-differences/

[2]: http://web.archive.org/web/20140719161748/http://manu.sporny...

Re: The Downward Spiral of Microdata

#16
post #5

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 theore…

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...

http://interconnected.org/home/more/2005/06/1000Plateaus00Rh...

(You seem philosophically-minded)

Re: The Downward Spiral of Microdata

#18
post #17

"Google suggests using microdata" https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/99170?hl=en&ref... I have no horse in this race, but isn't Google the search engine kinda the deciding factor here?

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).

Re: The Downward Spiral of Microdata

#20
post #5

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 theore…

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.

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