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I am very excited about Solid. That motivated me to write my thesis about a decentralised wiki, where Solid is its foundation. For further information, you can

by fuubi 7y ago

I am very excited about Solid. That motivated me to write my thesis about a decentralised wiki, where Solid is its foundation. For further information, you can have a look at my work journal (https://ma.parrillo.eu https://ma.parrillo.eu).

black_puppydog 7y ago
I'm very excited about your thesis! It's great you found a topic that you love. Keep at it! Any chance we can get rss for that blog of yours? :)
- fuubi 7y ago
  Thank you very much. It is on my todo list :). I will add it tomorrow.
- Vinnl 7y ago
  As a heads-up, it's been added: https://ma.parrillo.eu/rss.xml https://ma.parrillo.eu/rss.xml
bluesign 7y ago
Great to see someone with experience with Solid. I have few questions, maybe you can answer. I saw on your blog about wiki data model example. Let's say you built a Solid app around that one. Put on a website like superwiki.com, allowing users to create their wiki pages. Now then later, wikipedia came to scene, published another data model, and made another Solid app, put on wikipedia.org. - How will I move let's say my data from superwiki to wikipedia? - Does wikipedia then have to somehow implement some import functionality? - Or Solid has to have a protocol (standard) for wiki entries?
- Vinnl 7y ago
  > How will I move let's say my data from superwiki to wikipedia? Your data is not on superwiki, but on your Pod. So you can connect Wikipedia to your Pod, see your data in their app, but it's still in your Pod, rather than having been moved. > Does wikipedia then have to somehow implement some import functionality? As follows from the previous answer: no, because the data never moves to Wikipedia. However: > Or Solid has to have a protocol (standard) for wiki entries? No, apps define their own data model, so Wikipedia will have to understand Superwiki's data model. Ideally, they agree on a common standard for this, using that standardisation either as a selling point or as a way to comply with future regulations. But of course, an app could also just unilaterally imitate the other's data model, just like e.g. browsers imitated each others' extension API or bookmarks data model. (Disclosure: I also work for Inrupt, but views are my own.)
  - bluesign 7y ago
    I understand data is not moving but if data structures are different there has to be some kinda merge or cloning of the data. So basically I am at Wikipedia and Superwiki's mercy for interoperability. What is the value of having(hosting my own data) if I cannot move. "unilaterally imitate the other's data model" sounds good at the beginning, but what will happen when superwiki is constantly evolving its data structure, and wikipedia also at the same time developing features. And now imagine this with N Actors instead of 2. Regulations maybe can help on basic data , but for extended data there will be a lot of conflict. (ex: I can move my friend list, but can't move let's say special data I assigned to them in one app)
    - fuubi 7y ago
      Correct, you are at the mercy that both Wikis are interoperable. But, each of the N actors can have its model and only agree on an abstraction, which the interoperability is based on. Let's assume an application provides a new feature, which deviates from the abstraction model. As an example, that feature could be of a "like" counter. The counter would then only be visible in a subset of application. Since the underlying data structure is a graph, every application can attach arbitrary information to an node. But the application only retrieves the necessary bits. Furthermore, I think that apps must be able to handle missing bits to some extent. I hope this is not confusing. If it helps, one could think of Solid to be the GraphQL endpoint, where the clients send queries expressed as SPARQL and only get back the requested bits of information.
    - jdsalaro 7y ago
      > What is the value of having(hosting my own data) if I cannot move. The value of having your own data is, precisely, that you have your own data; nothing more and no less. Furthermore, and although I'm no expert in Solid's and other implementations, it's quite likely that you, or other technologists, can more easily help you achieve the interoperability you so desire if your data is not locked away behind thousand APIs and rate-limits; after all you do have your data in your pod. Think of Instagram, what if all your data was stored locally? Even if it was stored in a really messy JSON schema or whatever you can think of; it's still trivial to massage that data to import it into Wikimedia, or iterate through it and send it in batches to your email, or remove it, etc. I'm not sure how solid plans to keep applications from stealthily generating derivatives of the data they manipulate. I can imagine some sort of separation would have to happen at the browser level where the "app" provides a scaffold and the browser replaces in your data.
Vinnl 7y ago
Hey, great that you're interested in Solid! It might be me not having paid attention, but I think I haven't come across this earlier. It might be interesting to share this on the forum as well, to get the community's input: https://forum.solidproject.org https://forum.solidproject.org (Apologies if you already posted there.)
- fuubi 7y ago
  You're right. I wanted to introduce myself. Unfortunately, I didn't yet. That would be great. I look forward to the community feedback.

by fuubi 7y ago

black_puppydog 7y ago

I'm very excited about your thesis! It's great you found a topic that you love. Keep at it! Any chance we can get rss for that blog of yours? :)

fuubi 7y ago
Thank you very much. It is on my todo list :). I will add it tomorrow.
Vinnl 7y ago
As a heads-up, it's been added: https://ma.parrillo.eu/rss.xml https://ma.parrillo.eu/rss.xml

bluesign 7y ago

Great to see someone with experience with Solid. I have few questions, maybe you can answer. I saw on your blog about wiki data model example. Let's say you built a Solid app around that one. Put on a website like superwiki.com, allowing users to create their wiki pages. Now then later, wikipedia came to scene, published another data model, and made another Solid app, put on wikipedia.org. - How will I move let's say my data from superwiki to wikipedia? - Does wikipedia then have to somehow implement some import functionality? - Or Solid has to have a protocol (standard) for wiki entries?

Vinnl 7y ago
> How will I move let's say my data from superwiki to wikipedia? Your data is not on superwiki, but on your Pod. So you can connect Wikipedia to your Pod, see your data in their app, but it's still in your Pod, rather than having been moved. > Does wikipedia then have to somehow implement some import functionality? As follows from the previous answer: no, because the data never moves to Wikipedia. However: > Or Solid has to have a protocol (standard) for wiki entries? No, apps define their own data model, so Wikipedia will have to understand Superwiki's data model. Ideally, they agree on a common standard for this, using that standardisation either as a selling point or as a way to comply with future regulations. But of course, an app could also just unilaterally imitate the other's data model, just like e.g. browsers imitated each others' extension API or bookmarks data model. (Disclosure: I also work for Inrupt, but views are my own.)
- bluesign 7y ago
  I understand data is not moving but if data structures are different there has to be some kinda merge or cloning of the data. So basically I am at Wikipedia and Superwiki's mercy for interoperability. What is the value of having(hosting my own data) if I cannot move. "unilaterally imitate the other's data model" sounds good at the beginning, but what will happen when superwiki is constantly evolving its data structure, and wikipedia also at the same time developing features. And now imagine this with N Actors instead of 2. Regulations maybe can help on basic data , but for extended data there will be a lot of conflict. (ex: I can move my friend list, but can't move let's say special data I assigned to them in one app)
  - fuubi 7y ago
    Correct, you are at the mercy that both Wikis are interoperable. But, each of the N actors can have its model and only agree on an abstraction, which the interoperability is based on. Let's assume an application provides a new feature, which deviates from the abstraction model. As an example, that feature could be of a "like" counter. The counter would then only be visible in a subset of application. Since the underlying data structure is a graph, every application can attach arbitrary information to an node. But the application only retrieves the necessary bits. Furthermore, I think that apps must be able to handle missing bits to some extent. I hope this is not confusing. If it helps, one could think of Solid to be the GraphQL endpoint, where the clients send queries expressed as SPARQL and only get back the requested bits of information.
  - jdsalaro 7y ago
    > What is the value of having(hosting my own data) if I cannot move. The value of having your own data is, precisely, that you have your own data; nothing more and no less. Furthermore, and although I'm no expert in Solid's and other implementations, it's quite likely that you, or other technologists, can more easily help you achieve the interoperability you so desire if your data is not locked away behind thousand APIs and rate-limits; after all you do have your data in your pod. Think of Instagram, what if all your data was stored locally? Even if it was stored in a really messy JSON schema or whatever you can think of; it's still trivial to massage that data to import it into Wikimedia, or iterate through it and send it in batches to your email, or remove it, etc. I'm not sure how solid plans to keep applications from stealthily generating derivatives of the data they manipulate. I can imagine some sort of separation would have to happen at the browser level where the "app" provides a scaffold and the browser replaces in your data.

Vinnl 7y ago

Hey, great that you're interested in Solid! It might be me not having paid attention, but I think I haven't come across this earlier. It might be interesting to share this on the forum as well, to get the community's input: https://forum.solidproject.org https://forum.solidproject.org (Apologies if you already posted there.)

fuubi 7y ago
You're right. I wanted to introduce myself. Unfortunately, I didn't yet. That would be great. I look forward to the community feedback.