Categories
Weblogging

Weblog standards

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I’m tired tonight, but Anil asked a fair question and I wanted to try to write a fair answer. He wrote in my comments:

Shelley, just curious: (honestly, not being sarcastic) what standards body do you think would be appropriate for hosting these formats, protocols, and APIs?

If I was a dreaming kind of person, which I am though I have this urge to make my dreams real without any real expectation of accomplishing the reality, my ideal weblogging standards organization would be based somewhat on the concept of “source gets you votes”. In other words, you could buy your way in just by giving your source code and specification over for management by the group. So, the Trotts could buy their way in with Trackback, Userland with RSS 2.0, and Ev with the concept of the weblogging API. That takes care of the big three.

Now, the group wouldn’t stop there. There are other major organizations that are impacted by weblogging specifications, including other weblogging and peripherial tools. They could buy their way in by a) demonstrating that their tool/specification has a significant number (TDB) of users, and b) turning their efforts over for management by the organization.

For the rest of the tool developers and vendors — elect members from specific categories of software. For instance, elect two people to represent the aggregators, because of the number of aggregators, perhaps 1 from the web services folks, and so on. This won’t be a huge number, but does provide representation. And this is a revolving vote among the vendors/organization/developers.

Finally the users — the committee is completed by electing an equal number of people from the user community, mixed half and half between the techs and non-techs. I split the techs and non-techs to ensure that there isn’t a complete domination by technical folks. But can’t exclude tech folks because there are technical people who don’t create weblogging software, but help out with its use. I know a couple people right of the bat I’d vote in from this category.

As for the vote count, if there are 9 ‘permanent’ positions (and don’t choke on that word ‘permanent’ yet), and 8 additional from the technology reps — a total of 17 people — there would be 18 revolving positions from the user community.

All positions except for those who ‘buy’ their way in with a spec or a standard are for one year only. The other people, those who have turned over their specifications and technologies for management can remain as long as they want, provided they aren’t voted out at the end of each year. In other words, if you’re an asshole, you’re going to get kicked off. Work with the team, and you stay. Howver, permanent positions can recommend a replacement — as long as the replacement is acceptable to the body politic.

In my opinion, existing standards organizations and structures won’t work — the weblog industry is equivalent to what the Internet used to be in that things in this industry move fast, fast, fast. By keeping the standards organization within the community, we keep control of the technology within the hands of those who believe in the technology.

With the makeup of the organization, it will be difficult for power pockets to develop, especially since the revolving members from the user community and vendors change every year, and difficult people can get voted off (or retire voluntarily). You could, but then, you get the same thing now — at least a standards organization would provide some semblance of sanity.

To make this work, every weblogger will need to make a decision — only to use software that guarantees it is Weblog Standards compliant. If people really like the way things are done, with the back biting, undercutting, power playing, multi-standard, multi-API — they don’t need to do anything. If they’re a wee bit tired of it, they can vote their choices. The same goes for those people who think standards will ‘stifle’ creativity — then vote your choice.

Someone said, “put it on the table”. Well, consider it put.

Categories
RDF

Harvard Support?

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Dave Winer uses his Harvard weblog, and we assume the clout and prestige of his Harvard position, to push the weblogging industry into backing his versions of both RSS and a Weblogging MetaAPI.

There’s already been discussion about Winer taking on ‘co-creator’ claims with RSS — something I and others dispute. Now, he is doing the same types of power manipulation with the MetaWeblog API:

The same philosophy dictates an end to the disagreement over RSS. If they want respect for the formats and protocols they implement, they must do RSS exactly as UserLand does. The thing that Blogger and MT currently call RSS is not only not what UserLand does but it isn’t even an improvement over what UserLand does. Lose-lose.

Sure, other people encourage this nasty thing, but that doesn’t make it right. I’ve written to all the parties privately on this. It’s important, if the blogging API world is to come together in a rational way, we must have basic aggreement on RSS. It’s time to settle this argument now. This is the nasty stuff the big companies do. Let’s get over it and get some principles in place now.

About APIs, I request others support the MetaWeblog API without reservation. If you want me reorganize and move the docs to a neutral place and put an IETF-like disclaimer on it, I’m happy to do so. Maybe this is something Harvard could help with. I ain’t going with MIT, they’re the competition.

Smiley faces aside, these closed door discussions by private phone between “The Big Three” of weblogging, the re-writing of history about the tools, the use of a respected institution to add credibility for what is a dispute based on personality differences — Congratulations, weblogging: you’ve just become a true American industry.

Ford, Chrysler, and GM would be proud.

What’s next — a Userland RDF?

Categories
Just Shelley Web Weblogging

Server update

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The money received from the sale of Threadneedle, combined with the other money you were all kind enough to contribute to a server will enable me to get a dedicated server. I’m looking at RackForce, a Canadian provider. Then, if what I write becomes too hot for Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld, they can’t have the content pulled since the server will be, in effect, offshore. And I plan on writing a great deal of hot things in the months to come since the current administration looks to be up to its old and bad games again.

I’ll have enough room to provide homes for other webloggers who have run into some financial challenges and need a place to stay but don’t have a lot of cash. This will be the start of that co-op I’ve talked about in the past, and something I’m looking forward to working with.

I also wanted to extend a thank you to AKMA, for suggesting the name of “Threadneedle” for the application that led to the domain. With the new server, I would have the capacity to work on the Threadneedle application, except now that we have Trackback, it’s not needed. However, I have some other things to work on, which I’ll roll out if I ever complete them. Except this time, code first, talk later.

Categories
Diversity Writing

Art and the artist’s dilemma

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Ezra Pound has been under discussion lately, and not just in Loren’s analysis of Pound’s Cantos — his lifelong work. Jonathon also discussed Pound but from a different perspective. He wrote about the dilemma between Ezra Pound the poet, and Ezra Pound the anti-Semitic traitor. Specifically, the issue had to do with Pound being nominated and receiving the Bollington prize for his Pisan Cantos, which he wrote while being incarcerated for treason.

This is not an easy topic. I don’t see an easy answer or a clear one, and the feelings can run high, as witness my anything but subtle “Being an American is not a limitation” pushback of yesterday. On the one hand, it’s important to separate the art from the artist, because to do otherwise encourages censorship. On the other hand, honoring a person’s art indirectly honors the artist, no matter how much we try to isolate the work.

Ezra Pound is considered a poet’s poet, the father of modern poetry, and the mentor of other poetry legends such as TS Eliot and e.e. Cummings. His Cantos are considered the definitive work of its kind — literary masterpieces. I’m not one to take on something like the Cantos, but I rather liked Pound’s sweet little poem An Immorality:

Sing we for love and idleness,
Naught else is worth the having.

Though I have been in many a land,
There is naught else in living.

And I would rather have my sweet,
Though rose-leaves die of grieving,

Than do high deeds in Hungary
To pass all men’s believing.

Yet from the man who penned this sweet song of the love of simple things over the immortality of being a hero, comes:

Is there a RACE left in England? Has it ANY will left to survive? You can carry slaughter to Ireland. Will that save you? I doubt it. Nothing can save you, save a purge. Nothing can save you, save an affirmation that you are English.

Whore Belisha is NOT. Isaccs is not. No Sassoon is an Englishman, racially. No Rothschild is English, no Strakosch is English, no Roosevelt is English, no Baruch, Morgenthau, Cohen, Lehman, Warburg, Kuhn, Khan, Baruch, Schiff, Sieff, or Solomon was ever yet born Anglo-Saxon.

And it is for this filth that you fight. It is for this filth that you have murdered your empire, and it is this filth that elects your politicians.

The dilemma of the artist as separate from their art continues today with Roman Polanski’s Academy Award nomination and subsequent win for directing The Piano, a movie about the very same Holocaust that Pound supported in his broadcasts. Polanski’s nomination coincided with the release of the transcript of the rape case he was charged with many years ago — the rape of a 13 year old girl. Ironically enough, the victim of the rape, now 39, urged the Academy not to hold back on giving Polanski the award.

In Jonathon’s comments, qB (coincidentally facing her own censorship issues right now) also brought up the controversy that surrounds Wagner, who was also anti-semitic. As the Guardian article writes, though, Wagner was not alone — Chopin, who I’m rather fond, was also anti-semitic (of which I wasn’t aware).

Jonathon had originally wrote a long time ago that he found an inverse proportion between the ‘goodness’ of an artist and the quality of their work. Ultimately, I don’t know what’s right. I do believe that work should not be censored, never censored. But I have a difficult time with the concept of honoring a work by a person who advocated the killing of millions. And these words sound exactly the same as the words I’ve heard from others, people whose opinions I deplore. So much for my smug assumption of moral superiority.

Where’s the line? I don’t know.

Maybe the solution to this dilemma is the one that the authorities took with Pound long ago — declare it all insane and push it out of the way and go on to other things.

Categories
Semantics

The meaning web

You may not be aware of this, but elements of the semantic web are already in place. For instance, if you’re not sure how to spell ‘algae’, you can search for a variation of the word, such as ‘algie’ along with a few characteristics, such as ‘slime’, ‘green’, and ‘water’, and Google responds with Do you mean algae slime green water? This may not seem like much, but there’s a great deal of putting together related words into a context, and then making some assumptions when a match isn’t found just to obtain a result of Do you mean….

The semantic web isn’t going to result from gigantic strides in science and technology — it’s going to result from efforts of people like you and I. From simple steps, just as with Google and the search for algae.

Joseph Duemer begins a discussion of poetry and the semantic web. He zeros in on that aspect of poetry that inspired my current effort in something such as the Poetry Finder. Joseph writes:

Poetry is the most human form of language, then, not because it is the most humane & not to valorize the term, but because poetry is a way of using language that takes maximal advantage of the notion that a word or phrase might “mean somewhat different things.” Somewhat. Some what. Poetry occupies the space between some & what. So how do we make our human machines grab onto human grammar? It seems just possible to me that metadata & metametadata & so on out to infinity might be used to create at least a semblance of human meaning that could move freely between machines & between machines & humans.

I agree with Joseph in that we can consider the use of metadata to create a connection between human meaning and machine understanding, but it won’t be the stuff of artificial intelligence. The important first step is to begin recording the data, and then once we have it, we can do interesting things with it, just as Google is doing interesting things with data it scrapes from web pages just as unannotated words.

Joseph also references the earlier work in creating this bridge between man and machine, through efforts such as Bertran Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein. However, these earlier pioneers did their work without the concept of the interlinked network that is the web, which changes everything. To them, the effort that the machines needed to take was nothing less than heroic — true thinking machines. But as we see with Google, most of what we need is a way of recording meaning as statements, a simple model of how these statements are related, and a straight forward text-based format that can be utilized by any tool, in any environment. From there, we can build meaning exponentially greater then a very smart spellchecker.

Joseph ends his essay with:

 

I’m going to continue reading about the bones & nerves of the web & in coming days look at the ways those structures hook up with my own literary & philosophical knowledge. The only way I’ve ever been able to learn anything is a) that I need to know it & b) that I could hook it on to stuff I already knew. (I know, there has the be a foundation–at least some say so–but for now I’d just say it’s turtles all the way down. I hope to begin working my way down the stacked turtles of the web in coming weeks; there is also the (I think related) project of investigating academic dishonesty. Good thing I don’t have a class to teach until July.

Yes, a very good thing. Which means I need to focus on my RDF for Poets writing, and help with the effort of knocking down that stack of turtles.