B:\datenbrei » sioc

Working as a Program Committee member

[GNU] — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:35:16 +0000

Back in May Uldis Bojars asked me if I would like to join the program committee for a series of workshops called “Social Data on the Web workshop (SDoW2008) co-located with the 7th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2008)”. As I am a great procrastinator and deadlines appear closed than they are I started reviewing two papers both found in the domain of tags and online presence.

I hope I get my stuff done this week, so stay tuned for more…

SIOC and AtomOWL: a new way to describe content…

[GNU] — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 17:49:06 +0000

AtomOWL and SIOC

… the other day Henry send a Mail to sioc-dev mailinglist raising the question of simularities between SIOC and AtomOWL [0].

AtomOWL introduces a Content Class which represents the encoded content of a entry of a atom feed. SIOC uses a RSS 1.0 Module to keep a sioc:Post‘s content. The SIOC Vocabulary Specification [1] does not instruct to use RSS 1.0 Module or AtomOWL.

What I would like to propose is, that the SIOC community adapts usage of the AtomOWL:Content class as it’s primary container for content as a SIOC best practice.

Using AtomOWL:Content instead of content:encoded gives two advantages:

1. Content is typed

content:encoded used CDATA[] to store its content, from a RDF/XML consumer perspective there is no way to figure out what the type of content is. AtomOWL:Content uses MIME media types to indicate the type of content. Some valuable information!

2. Reuse of Vocabularies

SIOC in general tries to reuse existing vocabularies. The use of content:encoded shows this. SIOC is a very progressive and fast developing eco system. Using the latest standards in content description on the semantic web is a stringent step forward.

In addition to that,

3. Cost of implementation is small

as an exporter of sioc data only needs to add a little more information to its output stream. Any information provided in a AtomOWL:Content object is provided by the underlying content management system or may be concluded. Integration of AtomOWL:Content enriched sioc data with the AtomOWL feed of the content management system is easy.

An Example

As an example how we could link AtomOWL:Content into a sioc:Post I have added a code snippet:



  
  
  SIOC and AtomOWL: a new way to describe content…
  
  2006-08-21T17:49:06Z
  
    http://bblfish.net/work/atom-owl/2006-06-06/#Content"/>
      
        <div xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" 
           xml:base="http:/b4mad.net/">
       <p><i>[content of the post itself here]</i></p>
     </div>
      
    text/xhtml

So, the interssting part is the red one… the content is simply inserted using a rdf:parseType="Resource" and a RDF type of AtomOWL:Content and a content type of XHTML (thats the white part). The rest (red parts) is to describe the sioc:Post content itself.

References:

SIOC and Firefox: detect and identify

[GNU] — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 15:46:53 +0000

The number of site publishing SIOC data on the web ist constantly increasing. To help users make use of this data “Semantic Radar” has been developed and release by Uldis BojÄrs.

It is a browser extension (for Fireofx only by now) which inspects web pages for links to Semantic Web metadata and informs the user about their presence by showing an icon in browser’s status bar.

Originally developed to detect presence of SIOC metadata it has been extended to cover other types of data. Currently it supports SIOC, FOAF and DOAP metadata.
The current version of Semantic Radar also pings the Semantic Web Ping Service when metadata is detected. This allows a community based discovery of the semantic web data and a notification of a central ping service.

UPDATE: Fred also has a post on Semantic Radar…

Using SKOS to describe communication structures

[GNU] — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 06:11:33 +0000

The last few weeks (or was it months?) I have hung out with the SIOC people on IRC and the mailing list and obviously I blog about it. SIOC is a ontology for Semanticaly Interlinced Online Communities. As such it is closely related to communication structures like a “statement” or “post” or whatever you call a message in your communication domain.

To define the terms used in a communication domain (and I mean domains like “bloggosphere”, “irc”, “mail”) SKOS was made. So the first step to enrich SIOC data is to define a few skos:Concepts:


 
  Weblog
  Blog
  
 
 
  Post
  Weblog Entry
  Blog Entry
  
  
 
 
  Comment
  
  
 
 
  Trackback

Using this thesaurus (or communication domain structure) we

may add additional semantics to SIOC data while maintaining SIOCs vision "to describe the information community sites have [] their structure and contents" [1] This thesaurus for a Weblog has a pretty flat structure, simply saying that a trackback is a subcategory of a comment which itself is a post as a subcategory of a weblog.

Having the concept of a sioc:Post and using a skos:Concept as a additional skos:subject with it could indicate the type of a message. This way the concept of a sioc:Post is omnipresent in all communication domains and per domain additional information is given how a message is named or labeled in that specific domain.

Example 1: A Usenet News Article would be of type sioc:Post and would have a skos:subject of http://b4mad.net/skos/communication/usenet#article. A reply on this message would be of type sioc:Post and would have a skos:subject of http://b4mad.net/skos/communication/usenet#article.

Example 1: A weblog entry would be of type sioc:Post and would have a skos:subject of http://b4mad.net/skos/communication/weblog#entry. A reply on this message would be of type sioc:Post and would have a skos:subject of http://b4mad.net/skos/communication/weblog#comment.

In both examples http://b4mad.net/skos/communication#comment is the skos:broader concept of http://b4mad.net/skos/communication/weblog#comment and http://b4mad.net/skos/communication/usenet#comment.

Using this pattern it is possible to interlink communication taking place in different communication domains such as Usenet News and Weblogs.

A full example of this pattern is available here. I also have made up a somehow incomplete thesaurus for the communication domains: weblog, usenet, mailinglist.

SIOC data I use to crawl

[GNU] — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 15:23:26 +0000

Crawling the web for SIOC data (which are most often provided by SIOC-enabled sites) needs a starting point, a so called plan file. I use one which is barely based on the wiki page found above, it is here. The format of rdfs:seeAlso is documented as recommended by DanC on ESW Wiki
Alex is providing a webservice that transforms SIOC Wiki pages to RDF/XML, this way one will get an up to date list of SPARQL endpoints and SIOC-enabled sites.

JSON cross-site Queries

[GNU] — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 12:02:05 +0000

Just a short note that I have implemented a SPARQL Query proxy returning JSON. The proxy may be found at /sparqs/proxy/ and is able to query a different number of Joseki Servers. This is very basic but gives freedom to query off-site datasets.

Currently enabled datasets:

apassant.net – Alex’s Joseki
sparql.captsolo.net – CaptSolo’s Joseki
b4eg.mine.nu – B:\datenbrei development Joseki

Try this!

is SIOC too much in Content Management business?

[GNU] — Sat, 17 Jun 2006 07:31:54 +0000

Danny Ayers mentioned that

[he] believe this [SIOC] started as a vocabulary for managing information associated with online forums, but it now has considerable overlap into the generic content management side of things.

My comment on the SIOC-dev mailinglist somehow has the same direction.

Beside the huge area of SIOC browser development and Uldis’ Ontology maintainance there needs to be a task to reduce redundancy with other Ontologies and add some usage recommendations to the SIOC Spec. Although the use of SKOS in combination with SIOC needs some more elaboration.

See Also: SIOC TODO list

no loopback from sioc:User to foaf:Person

[GNU] — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 06:49:05 +0000

Having a sioc:Post it points to it’s creator described as a sioc:User. Assuming a foaf:Person, it should describe that the Person owns a foaf:OnlineAccount – which is the sioc:User.
Since the sioc:User profile is “user”-centric (and sioc:User rdfs:subClassOf foaf:OnlineAccount), there should be a property that allows us to links back from a sioc:User to a foaf:Person to whom it belongs to.

Introducing a foaf:OnlineAccount foaf:accountOf foaf:Person


 a rdf:Property, owl:ObjectProperty;
:comment "Indicates an agent holds an account.";
:range ;
:domain ;
:isDefinedBy <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>;
owl:inverseOf ;
:label "account of";

See Also: SIOC for foafroll

seeAlso for SIOC hooked in page via RDFa

[GNU] — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 16:06:24 +0000

Providing links to SIOC data generated by a site may be done using a auto-discovery links. Embedding RDF in XHTML using the upcoming RDFa standard may be another way to link to SIOC data.

After a few discussions with CaptSolo and with some help from EliasT I have tweaked my WordPress to include the needed RDFa. Looking at the source of this page you will see something like:


 
  
  application/rdf+xml

To enabled correct parsing and XML Namespace assignment by a RDFa parser the element must contain namespace declarations for rdf, rdfs, dc and sioc.

Using some RDFa extractor service on any page on B:\datenbrei will give you a RDF file containing a rdfs:seeAlso (of type application/rdf+xml) which points to the RDF generated by the WordPress SIOC plugin for the corresponding page.

Next step: write a short XSLT to enable GRDDLing the same rdfs:seeAlso out of the post’s page.

SIOC live query

[GNU] — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 12:48:29 +0000

Having generated some SIOC data from PlanetRDF and SIOC mailing list at Google Groups I provide them at The #B4mad.Net SPARQL endpoint using ARC. Reusing XMLArmyKnife’s Javascript SPARQL library, I hacked some live query demo. Feel free to browse arround…

Generating SIOC data out of mailing list archives

[GNU] — Tue, 30 May 2006 06:23:47 +0000

SIOC provides "an ontology for describing discussion forums and posts on topic threads in online community sites" and so called exporters for WordPress or Drupal blogging/cms software. Using that one is perfectly suited to provide information about the activities of communities on websites. A exporter for mailing lists (which are heavily used by communities too) is not provided. I will outline how such a SIOC mailinglist exporter may work…

I like to reuse, so that’s the first policy.
The second policy is, that I dont want to deal with the email archives, but will use RSS or Atom representation of the archive as the source of information.

How to understand the information provided by mailing list archives in a SIOC context?

First of all, the mailing list archive is obviously a sioc:Forum (archive itself represented by a RSS or Atom feed) with sioc:Posts (individual mails, RSS/Atom items). The sender of the mail is a sioc:User, which is the sioc:has_creator of the sioc:Post. The website hosting the mailing list archive is defined as the sioc:Site, the initialy mentioned sioc:Forum sioc:has_host this sioc:Site. Got it?

As a test subject I took the SIOC-dev mailing list at Google Groups, development is supported by RDFReactor.

Results of my work can be found 1. as Java code and 2. as the resultung SIOC data.

Comments and any other feedback is welcome!

SIOC enabling a community site

[GNU] — Mon, 22 May 2006 20:15:27 +0000

After installing the SIOC WordPress plugin this site is enabled to provide SIOC data for the site itself, users and all articles on B:\datenbrei. Many site on the internet don’t provide SIOC data, this is mainly due to the fact that SIOC development is still at an early stage. But what about Planets? Do they provide SIOC data? So let’s have a look at Planet RDF and how it may be enabled to provide SIOC data.

Planet RDF provides a foafroll, a RDF/XML representation of the feeds which get aggregated and their authors. This is a good starting point and actually a pretty complete description of the RDF community (at least of the blogging RDF community).

Taking a look at foafroll we find foaf:Agents and there blogs. This provided data will be convertet into SIOC Users in the first step.

 
 FOAF Project 
  
   
   FOAF Project

I would like to propose a mapping like this:

 
  FOAF Project

Next step is to set up a sioc:Usergroup containing all members (foaf:Agents) of the foafroll:

 
  Authors at PlanetRDF.com

Interpreting sioc:Site as “This is a Community” and not as “This is one Site of others of a Community” one must interpret Planet RDF as a Forum of the community/Site:


 PlanetRDF.com, part of the RDF Community
 
 



 The RDF Community
 Planet of the RDF Community

Note: Maybe it would make some sense to rename sioc:Site to sioc:Community? See also a SIOC-dev posting (or was it a chat with CaptSolo??).

I have not done some Jena-based code up until now. Before releasing it I would like to have some comments on the idea, maybe some improvements need to be incorporated…

A complete example of a SIOC-from-foafroll (handcrafted) and some coffee is available too.