Ask Slashdot: What Happened To Semantic Publishing?

An anonymous reader writes There has always been a demand for semantically enriched content, even long before the digital era. Take a look at the New York Times Index, which has been continuously published since 1913. Nowadays, technology can meet the high demands for "clever" content, and big publishers like the BBC and the NY Times are opening their data and also making a good use of it.

In this post, the author argues that Semantic Publishing is the future and talks about articles enriched with relevant facts and infoboxes with related content. Yet his example dates back to 2010, and today arguably every news website suggests related articles and provides links to external sources. This raises several questions: Why is there not much noise on this topic lately? Does this mean that we are already in the future of Online (Semantic) Publishing? Do we have all the tools now (e.g. Linked Data, fast NoSQL/Graph/RDF datastores, etc.) and what remains to be done is simply refinement and evolution? What is the difference in "cleverness" of content from different providers?

Comments

Not always clever.

[wcrowe]

There is a fine line between "clever" and "annoying". Very often, what gets considered as "related" content, is only tangently related, and sometimes the way it is displayed makes it indistinguishable from the content of the current article. Add to that all of the surrounding clickbait, and it just becomes a confusing mess.

I hope "semantic" != "annoying popups"

[TuballoyThunder]

I hate, hate, hate, hate web pages that have hot-linked words with popups. It is even worse when it is an advertisement. And those "recommended articles" at the end are just as bad. Click-bait links to content that is of no value.

Re:I hope "semantic" != "annoying popups"

[gstoddart]

Sadly, almost all new "innovations" on the web are almost immediately co-opted by advertising, which more or less renders the technology as crap to be blocked.

It's all about monetizing, and nothing to do with an improved experience.

The internet has more or less been ruined by marketing.