Greatest Task of Web 2.x: Meta-Validation

CexpTretical writes "This Technology Review article about Web 2.x problems fails to mention the 800 pound gorilla in the room when it comes to fulfilling the dreams of the Semantic Web — i.e., assumptions about the validity of metadata or tagging schemes. We can add all of the metadata and/or tags we want to web resources but that does not mean that the 'data about the data' honestly or accurately describe the resource or are 'about the data' at all. This is why Google does not place much importance on the metadata already contained in HTML document headers for search ranking, because it cannot be trusted. And to validate it would require more effort than to search and index that data from scratch. Ensuring or verifying the validity of metadata would be a task equal to that of initially creating it, but would have to be repeated on an ongoing basis. Hence all of the talk about 'trusted networks,' which then require trusting the gatekeepers of those networks. Talk about 'semantics.'" Slashdot's moderation and meta-moderation offer one example of getting useful metadata in a non-trusted environment.

Comments

Meta data

[Andrewkov]

Slashdot's moderation and meta-moderation offer one example of getting useful metadata in a non-trusted environment.

The tagging system might be a better example, or at least an example of mostly useless meta information.

Re:You can't trust the moderation system either

[TheFlyingGoat]

You are definitely correct, but I wonder if this would be the same in a search environment like Google. First, you have a much broader selection of people that can mark meta-data as being accurate or not. Second, people will not see the meta-data without specifically searching for it. This means that the people searching for "swingers in Milwaukee" will most likely be people that don't frown upon such behavior. There are still obvious issues, like people searching for more general controversial terms like creationism/evolution or people that disagree with a certain behavior organizing against certain sites by "moderating" them poorly. I could easily see this happening in politics and religion.

Mod Spam?

[quanticle]

Here on Slashdot, there is a selection process and a reputation system that determines who has the ability to moderate. How does this "Web 2.0" address the fact that anyone can attach and moderate tags?