[rdfweb-dev] FOAF browsing and FOAFster

[Marc Canter]

Jim replied.....

>>There's been plenty of discussion [about groups], but no concrete
proposals yet exist for describing groups.

Marc's reply......

OK - so that's one area I wanna try and help on.........

===================================

Marc originally brought up..........

e) What is the (RDF)Web's version of a home page?


And Jim replied......

A homepage is pretty much all of them, a homepage has a good
understanding
with people I think, although I'm surprised there's no dictionary
definitions of it.

Marc concludes that........

A best practices page (on the Wiki) could resolve many of these
ambiguities.  I'd gladly help flesh that out..... recanting many of the
lessons I'm learning here (and elsewhere.)

=====================================

Another one of Marc's original questions was.......

> ..... is it assumed that the page that displays the
> FOAFicon - is THE page where the embedded FOAF (or at least pointer to
> the RDF) is?

Jim replied......

You can put pointers to the RDF whereever you want, in any page, or
every
page, if you put an icon, then it's probably a good idea to, but it
makes
little difference.

Marc concludes....

Another one for the best practices page (along with lessons like 'don't
put in ... inside a <nickname> tag'

======================================

Another original Marc statement was about.......

>     - verifying one's friend list
>     - sending out invites - to become friends

Jim replied eloquently........

Any tool that emails me to ask permission to become a friend would be
extremely unwelcome and would lose a lot of goodwill I have to the foaf
universe.  If people want to say they're a friend of mine, great, that's
little to do with me, I certainly don't need to know about it.
Friendship
doesn't have to be reciprocal, because we all have different ideas of
friendship means, in any case, the relationship is knows, not
friendsWith.

..... There's nothing wrong he saying he knows me, and
there's nothing wrong with me not agreeing with it, that's the reality
we're
modeling, and it allows us to distinguish between the important
information
that both people know each other.........

In the foaf-world, I only "know" people who I've shared a drink with,
online
interaction isn't really enough, that doesn't mean there aren't people
out
there who I'd do much the same I would for a friend (trust an
introduction
from, do favours for etc.) but for me, I feel it's important to have
actually met them.

And so now questions.....

If you're into modeling reality - to build a semantical web - how can we
have relationships that are only one-way?  Certainly SOMEBODY must want
a reciprocated, confirmed relationship?

I also feel funny calling someone 'friend' - so I used the 'acquaintance
of' option - over and over again. But most of you - I don't even know
enough to call an acquaintance. So there should be a 'know by reputation
only' option.  But that's all one-way!

Why can't FOAF files be two-way - describing a reciprocated friendship?
Certainly that's part of reality as well - no?  So when you actually
meet someone - then some other bit can get set - contributing to the
meta-data of the two-way relationship.


========================================

Back to an important point of the goal of FOAFster.......

Marc brought up......

>     - and dispensed with the nonsense of having to manually
> update/emerge the rdf - each time a change is made!

Jim replied.......

This is exactly what the mirroring would have to do, you'd have to ping
the
mirroring software, so I fail to see what's gained.  The current
aggregrators already expose recently found/updated foaf docs:
http://jibbering.com/foaf/recent.1 or
http://xml.mfd-consult.dk/foaf/scutter.rss - the aggregrators share
these,
ping one, the others find it, don't ping at all, others find it a little
slower - I don't really see how important it is to get the information
out
their real time - when foaf is on the desktop, that's never going to
happen.

Marc is lost now.........

I don't think it's a matter of real-time updating, as much as
convenience of having to manually update/change my stored foaf.rdf file.


Is there some mechanism/service I'm missing - that will take what I've
got - so far - and add/merge in new names, updated meta-data, new info -
into my existing foaf.rdf?

And if not - then there seems to be a conflict/dichotomy of sorts - of
providing automatic identity services (or semantical anything at alls) -
which have the end-user 'controlling' the file - while having an
'outside' service come in and update it.  No?  

I'm obviously confused here.........

=================================================

Another Marc idea.....

>    - present a personal 'portal' type interface where one could
> display links, RSS channels, reviews,
> conversations - sort of a complement to their blog - or act as the
> blog's "About me." page..

Jim retorts.......

What value would this add to me, why do I want to exist on some portal?

Marc clarifies.......

Well what value would Haystack give you?  Why is Nat Friedman doing
dashboard?  Why can't we imagine that the mainstream portals wake up and
start providing coolio services and capabilities one day?  

That's what my company would LOVE to provide!