From : Stéphane Corlosquet < : Stéphane Corlosquet < scorlosquet@gmail.com



Message-ID : <AANLkTi=uDCjdgHnQ9tcgLxE+1YTxVagQhJYTU5Yd58CD@mail.gmail.com>

To : Public RDFa < : Public RDFa < public-rdfa@w3.org

Cc : "Clark, Lin" < : "Clark, Lin" < lin.w.clark@gmail.com



Hi, There's been an interesting conversation going on about the use of RDFa in Drupal 7 and whether it's ethical or not, see http://groups.drupal.org/node/83914 What is being questioned is not the implementation of RDFa in Drupal 7 in itself, but the fact that it is enabled by default when people install the software on their server. It's very easy to opt out and turn off RDFa, but the claim is that newbies will not know what RDFa is or won't even realize it is on. In this case, we might be forcing them to get into the semantic web and find their data being reused in ways they might not have thought of. I think it's great they raised this concern, I'd rather have this discussed sooner rather than later. Lin and I have been trying to address the various concerns expressed in that thread, but I wonder what people in this list think of the overall RDFa switch on by default. I understand this list might have a biased opinion, but I'm hoping some of you can play the devil's advocates... I was trying to find similar examples to compare with this situation, but I can't think of any widely used software shipping with RDFa by default. The closest I can think of are services like identi.ca which publish FOAF data and as far as I know there is no way for people to opt out. Should such services or website start advertising that they will release data about their user as RDF(a)? Some time ago I remember some fuss about services which started publishing RDF data (was it livejournal?) and they had to turn it off. Here is hoping to learn from the older/wiser folks from this list and avoid some FUD down the road... Shall we simply turn off RDFa and let people turn it on when they see fit? cheers, Steph.