Hello,
Great to see so much feedback. As A. Soroka mentioned, some Fedora
adopters are already using Stanbol or looking into it. We at the Art
Insitute of Chicago fall in the latter category.
Reading and understanding the documentation has been tough indeed. I
have some use cases and I have been trying to figure out whether Stanbol
is a good fit for them, but I cannot match what I read in the docs with
what I have in my running Stanbol instance (for example, where is the
content hub?). Also, without a reasonably regular release schedule or a
1.x release available, it is hard to rely on Stanbol for tasks beyond
experimental or ancillary.
With a massive introduction of Linked Data concepts in the latest
version of Fedora I foresee it being just a matter of time until more
folks will start looking at something to resolve semantic integration
issues. If that is Stanbol's goal, it would be great to rely on a
community project rather than on individual implementations.
The AIC has very limited developer resources, but we may be able to
contribute with use cases, ideas, testing, and spreading the word; and I
am sure that if enough awareness arises, more contribution may come from
other sides.
Thanks,
Stefano
On 05/20/2016 06:34 AM, Antero Duarte wrote:
Hi,
I will gather all the documentation I have, create some comments on
what I don't really understand and essentially got to work on a
trial-error basis and then I will send these to everyone. I will also
outline in the same email some features I don't understand, some
features that I think are useful but don't know how to configure/ not
sure if they are actually fully implemented and a list of items that I
came across that no longer apply/are deprecated.
Regards,
Antero
On Fri, 20 May 2016 at 11:39 Rafa Haro <rh...@apache.org
<mailto:rh...@apache.org>> wrote:
HI Antero,
On Fri, May 20, 2016 at 12:23 PM Antero Duarte
<a.fduar...@gmail.com <mailto:a.fduar...@gmail.com>> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> Stanbol is great and I would hate to see it die.
>
Couldn't be more agree!
>
> About the lack of feedback from users/developers, I can only say
that it
> took quite a while for me to be able to reply to someone on this
mailing
> list because the learning curve is so steep. I bet a lot of
people still
> read and are interested in stanbol updates, but they just don't
have the
> technical know-how to be involved. I include myself in this
group, I have
> answered a couple of questions, but only really basic ones, as I
fear my
> knowledge of the platform as a whole doesn't allow me to answer more
> complicated questions.
>
> I think one step that definitely needs to be taken is
improving/updating
> the existing documentation. I know for a fact that one thing
that really
> put me off when I first started using stanbol was the that there was
> documentation that was unclear, examples that were unable to be
reproduced
> for several reasons, and outdated documents that referenced
components that
> no longer existed in the latest stable release of stanbol (I'm
not even
> talking about the latest build from trunk).
>
That's true again imho. Also Development documentation, not only
final user
one is needed. And probably some work on making the APIs more
comprehensible.
>
> I have a couple of documents that I have written over time that
made it
> easier for me to understand how stanbol works and I could share
these but
> they would need to be reviewed by someone who understands
stanbol a lot
> better than me.
>
Please share, for sure we can all take benefit from it and improve the
documentation
>
> I understand that you have busy lives and as developers, you'd
rather use
> the little time you have to code than to write documentation,
but if we can
> make stanbol more approachable to newcomers, I believe the
developer pool
> would increase greatly and we could make Stanbol great again.
>
+1. It would be great to have also concrete examples about what
features,
components and son on are not clear enough or just deprecated in the
current live documentation so we can start by those
Thanks a lot!
>
> My two cents.
>
> Best Regards,
> Antero Duarte
>
> On Fri, 20 May 2016 at 10:26 Rafa Haro <rh...@apache.org
<mailto:rh...@apache.org>> wrote:
>
> > Hi Soroka,
> >
> > First of all, reading this kind of emails is, in my opinion, a
cause of
> > happiness as a new attempt to somehow reactivate the project.
I share the
> > same feeling about Apache Stanbol since sometime ago. More
than one month
> > ago, there was a Google Hangout meeting joined by some
committers and
> also
> > users. We tried to sketch an immediate roadmap and planned to
release
> > version 1.0 in the following weeks after that meeting. We sent
an email
> to
> > the list with the meeting minutes, but after that there was a
lot of
> > silence again.
> >
> > Probably the main problem right now is probably the lack of
quality time
> to
> > dedicate to the project for the current active committers. I
can only
> speak
> > for myself: in my particular case, in the last year I have
used Stanbol
> for
> > a couple of projects, we developed a couple of custom engines
that we can
> > prepare for contribution, but we never found the proper time
to do this,
> > among other things because we didn't have clear if those
engines could be
> > useful for the community. And that is probably another
symptom, we have
> > been progressively losing feedback from users,
developers....community:
> > there are less and less messages in the mailing list every
month. This
> > scenario is probably not too much motivating for aiming
contributions and
> > finding new committers. There are probably more reasons, like
Stanbol is
> > not technically very friendly to be approached.
> >
> > Of course I'm not saying this situation is someone fault. I'm
not very
> sure
> > about the best recipe for improving the situation either.
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> > On Thu, May 19, 2016 at 5:49 PM A. Soroka <aj...@virginia.edu
<mailto:aj...@virginia.edu>> wrote:
> >
> > > Hi, Stanbol folks!
> > >
> > > I'm writing to you on behalf of the community of Fedora
Commons (
> > > http://fedora-commons.org). Fedora is an information
architecture with
> > > open source reference implementation that has come into wide
use over
> the
> > > last fifteen years in the "cultural heritage" world of
libraries,
> > archives,
> > > museums, etc. For many years, we've been intensely concerned
with the
> > ideas
> > > that go under the loose label of "the Semantic Web". In
fact, the
> latest
> > > edition of Fedora is an Linked Data Platform implementation,
amongst
> > other
> > > things.
> > >
> > > Several institutions using Fedora are also using Stanbol for
various
> > tasks
> > > (supporting OpenRefine, metadata entity management, NER,
etc.), and
> some
> > > discussion has occurred about its state and future
potential. It's not
> > > totally clear to us what kind of development community and
commitment
> > > therefrom currently exists. There has been discussion about
a 1.0
> release
> > > of Stanbol, but there doesn't seem to be much other activity
in the
> > > codebase, with very few of the listed committers making commits.
> > >
> > > We were wondering if it is possible to get a better sense of the
> > > near-mid-term future of the project. Is there a road map
beyond the 1.0
> > > release? Is Stanbol seeking new developers? What kinds of
resources are
> > > missing to put more vitality back into Stanbol? It's an
excellent
> project
> > > filled with great ideas and we'd like to see it move forward.
> > >
> > > We'd be happy to get together for a telephone call / Google
Hangout /
> > > other meeting, if that seems useful!
> > >
> > > ---
> > > A. Soroka
> > > The University of Virginia Library
> > >
> > >
> >
>
--
Stefano Cossu
Director of Application Services, Collections
The Art Institute of Chicago
116 S. Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL 60603
312-499-4026
