Semantic web and structured wikis

Raw notes
structured vs. semantic...
 * [?] - the key is reuse -- data that's marked up such as a date can then be used elsewhere
 * [yaron] they tie in -- if you're making it structured, it *should* be semantic!
 * but there are some that are one but not the other ;)

example of structured but not semantic: Wikipedia's infobox data.

example of semantic but not structured: Semantic MediaWiki lets you annotate things free-form and doesn't enforce any structural relationships or organization.

Building block for 'semantic web' as we know it is relational triplets: [subject predicate object] (as in RDF, but not necessarily locked to it). (Data set may, or may not actually offer a structured graph you can follow.)
 * [Italy has-capital Rome]
 * [I have-listened-to "Rubber Soul"]
 * [I am-a-friend-of you]
 * connected notes can be followed: [Stephane is-a-friend-of Pete] -> [Pete owns-this-album "Rubber Soul"]

Structures may exist (such as links, categories, infoboxes, etc) which are followable but don't provide an easy machine-readable triplet... Adding other information later can also be difficult if you hadn't planned for it.

Info in a wiki page that's not annotated is hard to search or read by machine or re-use. "No better than a typewriter" :)

[stephane] Don't need structure to be semantic -- you can mark up your freeform text. Microformats a stepping-stone to aid in exposing data for reuse directly in HTML as well.

[stephane] Ontology vs folksonomy...
 * ad-hoc tagging is good enough for a lot of things, but can be very hard to match up
 * formal ontologies generally built by experts, may be very complex, and might not match up well with other defined ontologies but will be very useful within a specific area.

[marc p] One of the neat things about wiki is that it's neither -- human intervention can switch things around, create new stuff, and apply things as they need to be changed with as much precision as needed

[yaron] Wikipedia is the biggest, most important semantic web project... despite not having much native semantic markup yet! The fact that it provides a unique URI for each term/concept means a shared vocabulary for many other semantic web projects... DBpedia serves as a middleman for this naming structure.

[someone] There are great semantic things that aren't wikis!

Further reading:
 * Zemanta
 * DBpedia
 * fredofromstart.wordpress.com (in English too by tomorrow)
 * Semantic MediaWiki
 * Wagn

Categories vs semantic... oh so much fun :D

Attendees

 * Stéphane Thibault
 * Nancyd
 * Ben Kovitz
 * Dave Crosby
 * David Mason