2012-04-12

schema.org Tree and the Vocabulary Forest

My feelings about schema.org from the very beginning have been so mixed that I read a lot about it and wrote nothing, until a while ago at the end of the first of LOV stories. Following Dan Brickley's introduction of schema.org to BBC about two weeks ago, Phil Archer is wondering if we should follow Danbri, which means move towards enthusiastic adoption of schema.org as the first general vocabulary of the Semantic Web, covering 50% of our needs, and calling more specific vocabularies long tail for more specialized use. I am more keen to follow Kerstin Forsberg's cautious approach, and started to wonder aloud about it on Google+, attracting a quick answer from Danbri. A sensible and pragmatic one (as usual) but which did not completely convince me to follow him (at least not in the sense proposed by Phil Archer).

2012-04-06

LOV stories, Part 3: Vocabularies as Heritage

In previous posts we introduced the Vocabulary Commons, following some of its Gardeners. Let's now  try to imagine how they can turn into a sustainable and resilient ecosystem. In the current state of affairs they look more like a young forest pionneering a new land. A lot of opportunist species have invaded the landscape, some are conspicuous and seem here to stay, some look like they have no future, others have set up in small niches, all kind of interactions and dependencies have emerged.
Should we let the invisible hand of natural selection operate, and let the fittest survive? Do we want those commons to become a wild messy jungle, or rather a pleasant, useful and sustainable garden that we, our children and their children will enjoy? It's certainly how to achieve the latter the DCMI Vocabulary Management Community group has in mind. This group will hold its kick-off meeting on the first day of the London Seminar : Five Years On at the end of this month.