Re: Semantic Bleachers: was Re: Afghanistan War Diary as topic map in Maiana

Hi Patrick,

[...]
>> Exactly. Translating something literally to Topic Maps is not
>> interesting. WikiLeaks on Topic Maps would be interesting.
>> 

> Well, not even that.

> Wilileaks using topic maps to integrate its "leaked" information with
> other data held by it or by others would be interesting.

Sure, but even if WikiLeaks would publish their information
subject-centric it would be a step in the right direction. But I guess
that's neither their goal nor their entitlement.

If WikiLeaks would provide (published) subjects, others may add more
information to it.

Anyway, I think any subject-centric translation of WikiLeaks should
take subjects into account. Like DBpedia which translates a bunch of
HTML pages into something more useful.

Having all these WikiLeaks reports more or less unrelated is like
translating Wikipedia pages into topics with subject locators and
treating the HTML page as occurrence.

For sure Wikipedia is more accessible than WikiLeaks due to its
InfoBoxes, but I'd expect from a WikiLeaks topic map a subject-centric
view on a particular item. I think this summaries my criticism against
the provided translation very well. And maybe I should have said this
in my initial e-mail more explicit.

> That is to honor the promise of topic maps to navigate information about
> the same subjects across multiple locations and representations.

ACK.

[...]
> Although it is an old suggestion, that pops up every now and again, why
> don't we do a public topic map project?

Since nobody has time for it? People are eager to waste their time at
official meetings since they are paid for wasting time at the
conferences. But if you try to find volunteers in a (anyway small)
community, you may be lost.

> The Afghanistan War Diary would be good but many of us lack the
> expertise, background and interest to contribute to its substance.
> Someone on this list may have that expertise so it could be one of a
> such projects.

Yes, it could. But maybe the Afghanistan War Diary isn't the right
project to show what Topic Maps is about? If nobody as a clue about
this particular topic we shouldn't promote it as project which shows
"what's Topic Maps is about".

Sorry for the sarcasm, but trying to show the differences of Topic
Maps to Google Maps and promoting to search for coordinates may be ...
well ... difficult.

[...]
> Suggestions on general themes/data sets?

I'd suggest to create a proper translation of DBpedia to Topic Maps.
DBpedia has become a focal point of LOD and if Topic Maps want to play
a role in the recent movement we should try to provide a mappish view
on that data.

Best regards,
Lars
-- 
Semagia 
<http://www.semagia.com>

<http://www.topicmaps.de/mailinglist/> German Topic Maps mailing list
<http://tinytim.sourceforge.net/> Open Source Topic Maps engine
<http://mappa.semagia.com/> Mappa - Python Topic Maps engine