Re: Behind the times

Danny Ayers wrote:
<snip>
> Standardising categories is a hard problem, as everyone has their own
>  system. There is work ongoing in places like SKOS for mapping
> between such taxonomies, though as you suggest things like
> deli.cio.us offer a cheap and cheerful alternative.

"Standardising categories" is not a good idea, IMO. The purpose of RDF
is not to enable publishers to express their opinions about some piece
of content - it's to enable them to provide consumers with data about
the content (i.e. metadata).

I can invent my own categories for the information I consume, and they
are bound to serve me better than the hodgepodge of categories under
which publishers choose to categorise their own content. They don't
understand my perspective; I do.

Also: categories are subject to change over time; so the best category
into which to slip some item of content today may be superceded by some
new sub-category tomorrow. It's not reasonable to expect all RDF
documents to be changed (automatically or manually) in the light of the
publication of some new sub-category.

Metadata information encoded using RDF should be information that a
consumer can reasonably assume is more-or-less permanently accurate; I'm
thinking of descriptive information (this is what person X thinks about
the content on date Y) and factual information (this is how it's
encoded, this is the resolution, this is how you are permitted to use
it, this is where it was shot/recorded/written, this is the identity of
the owner of the rights; and this is where it is permanently located).

Categorisation seems to me to be a difficult and subjective activity,
and I don't feel comfortable about accepting someone else's
categorisations of a bunch of content. However there's no reason why a
publisher shouldn't be able to express their opinions about the
categories into which their content should be slotted by consumers; I'm
at liberty to ignore those opinions.

-- 
Jack.



 
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