RE: [syndication] The medium and the message

["Per Kreipke" <per@onclave.com>]

> > Leigh Dodds <ldodds@ingenta.com> wrote:

> At the moment all providers are 'trusted' i.e. of equal worth. What's
> needed is a way to assign a 'trustworthiness' to particular information
> sources. Who is reliable? Who do others consider to be reliable?, Who
> is a first hand source and who is merely repeating information?
>
> Its the natural next step to news and content syndication I believe.
> Everyone now has a printing press of their very own, so how do
> you assign value, worth, reliability, etc?
>
> > The source is certainly part of the information -- the medium, and the
> information
> > provider, I'm not so sure.
>
> Depends whether you trust the information carrier. Is there a possibility
> that
> the information could have been tampered with?

Thank you. Much more succinct than I was able to state the problem.

> This is where digital signatures apply I suppose.

I'm not sure. Does that mean that you can't fiddle with the syndicated
package? That can make it tough to do any value-add. For example, the way
moreover recombines articles from different feeds into new feeds on
different topics.

> [In the case of knowledge management and RDF, if the
> information is derived from (for example) a series of RDF
> assertions then I think it'd be important to be able to trace
> these back to determine their (continued) truth.
> To me thats another important facet to RDF - traceability]

Again, much better than I said it. I'm pretty sure you can lie in RDF just
like you can in any other format. Traceability and an authority to measure,
watch and inform the public. eTrust? Consumers Union? New business?

> This is probably straying way off topic for this list, so I'll cease and
> desist at this point and resume lurking.

Is it? There's such a fine line between off-topic and heresy.... Nuts. Guess
I'll stop.

Per.