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Beautiful Timing with a Monty Python Parody about Semantic Web
Posted by: Antony Williams in UncategorizedCopyright©2008 Antony Williams
Image via Wikipedia
I have essentially stayed away from my computer over the weekend pondering the Creative Commons discussions about ChemSpider. I’ve spent time playing with our twins, landscaping and “contemplating my navel”. After what happened at the end of last week regarding the shared opinions on our adoption of Creative Commons licenses I needed to spend sometime away from the computer. My frustration level has been increasing of late since ChemSpider has been put in the spotlight for so many reasons, and very few of them positive. Even this is strange considering we have now topped 6000 users per day, we receive kudos and blessings from our users and, overall, I believe we are making a positive contribution to our intention to build a community for chemists.
Nevertheless, ChemSpider has become the “Free Access Chemistry Site du jour” for certain individuals to poke at. We appear to be the “model of concern” - lots of discussions going on about ChemSpider is “this” and “that”, we need to consider our business model, ChemSpider needs licenses and many other commentaries. Thanks for discussing us out there in the blogosphere. Would you like to talk TO US instead? I’d appreciate having someone advise us on licensing etc at a minimum.
Anyhow, I was in the mood for a good belly laugh tonight when someone pointed me to a recent post by Rich Apodaca entitled “Just a Flesh Wound” and parodying the Semantic Web , RDFs etc. with Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s infamous blood and gore scene. I say go visit the site and, if you’ve been watching the many discussions in this area I think you’ll giggle too.
Stumble it!
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May 11th, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Congratulations! The fact that you are being hevaily attacked only means one thing: you have entered GandhiCon 3. Only one more step to go
In case you do not know what GandhiCon means:
http://catb.org/esr/jargon/html/G/GandhiCon.html
In short it refers to Gandhi’s saying:
“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”
ZZ.
May 12th, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Zsoldo’s post captures the essence of what I was going to say. If people aren’t criticizing you, then you’re probably not relevant. Personally, I have been really impressed with this wonderful resource called ChemSpider that ChemZoo has made available to the community of professionals who have an interest in chemical structures.
My previous company was so quick to recognize the value we were getting from ChemSpider that we made a modest donation to support such a goodwill effort. Including myself, I know of a number of fellow mass spectrometrists who are using ChemSpider extensively for structure elucidation work. In a very short time, ChemSpider has become indispensable to us and I’m willing to bet that we are using the site in a way that was never specifically intended. Such an outcome is proof that you are building a very useful resource whose value is only going to grow with time.
All of the contentious discussions about what is “Open Access” vs “Free Access” or what licensing mechanism should be used (e.g. Creative Commons) is merely academic to me. I say keep listening to your critics, as they can have some of the most valuable input. However, don’t let their negativity distract you from doing the really good work that has been such a benefit to chemists everywhere.