On 2014-10-06 06:59, Ivan Herman wrote:> Of course, I could expect a Web technology related crows to use HTML source editing directly but the experience by Daniel and myself with the World Wide Web conference(!) is that people do not want to do that. (Researchers in, say, Web Search have proven to be unable or unwilling to edit HTML source. It was a real surprise...). Ie, the authoring tool offers are still limited.
Can you please elaborate on that? When was that and what tools were available or used? Do you have any documentation on the landscape from that time that we can use or learn from?
My understanding is that, you've experienced some issues about a decade ago and your reasoning is clouded by that. Do you think that it would be fair to revisit the situation based on today's landscape and see how it will play out?
From my perspective, we should have a bit more faith in the SW community because then we might actually strive to deliver, as opposed to walking away from the problem.
Like I said in my previous emails, (which I'm sure you've read), the current workshops on SW/LD research publishing did not deliver. Why do you have so much faith for waiting out and hope that they will deliver? They might, and I hope they do. But, I'm not putting all my chips on that option alone. I would rather see grass-roots efforts in parallel e.g., http://csarven.ca/call-for-linked-research
What's the number of human hours on CfP on "Linked Science" + "Semantic Publishing" so far? How was the delivery of machine and human-friendly research changed or evolved? What's visible or countable? On that front, what can we do right now that wasn't possible 5-10 years ago?
In the meantime, if the conferences, workshops can get back on track and motivate people (at least), we would not only see more value drawn out of the SW research, but also growing funding opportunities, and faster progress across the field.
I am disappointed by the fact that instead of addressing the core issue "can the conferences allow or encourage the Web stack?" we are discussing distractions e.g., perfection in authoring tools. Every user has their own preferences i.e., some will code, some will use tool X. What you are suggesting is that, lets wait it out because the developments may reveal the perfect authorship tooling. If that was ever the case, we'd see it in the general "market", not something that might one day emerge out of SW/LD workshops.
I will bet that if the requirements evolve towards Webby submissions, within 3-5 years time, we'd see a notable change in how we collect, document and mine scientific research in SW. This is not just being "hopeful". I believe that if all of the newcomers into the (academic) research scene start from HTML (and friends) instead of LaTeX/Word (and friends), we wouldn't be having this discussion. If the newcomes are told to deal with LaTeX/Word (regardless of hand coding or using a WYSIWYG editor) today, they are going to do exactly that. That basically pushes the date further for complete switch over to Webby tools because majority of those researchers would have to be flushed out of the system, before the next wave of Webby users can have their chance.
Even if we have all of the perfect or appropriate tooling (which I think is the wrong thing to aim for) right now, it will still take a few years to flush out or have the current LaTeX/Word users to evolve. I would rather see the smallest change happen right now than nothing at all.
*AGAIN*, technology is not the problem. #DIY -Sarven http://csarven.ca/#i
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