Re: Arcs

On 21 Oct 2010, at 11:31 AM, Patrick Durusau wrote:

> Murray,
> 
> On Thu, 2010-10-21 at 15:36 +1300, Murray Altheim wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> 
>> It's kind of a boy thing to want to lay claim to semantic territories,
>> like planting a little flag on the moon, and I admit to having been
>> a boy in the past. Nowadays I'd rather the owners plant their own flags.
>> Then everyone can use those identifiers canonically, rather than demand
>> that people use *our* namespaces as wrappers for their semantics. That
>> would promote usage across all communities.
>> 
> 
> +1!!!!
> 
> I would go a step further and suggest that owners already have their own
> flags. 

I'd agree with this, but...

> 
> It is a question of semantic software recognizing owners' flags rather
> than training owners to use different flags.
> 

isn't the above what we've been trying to do for the last 30 years? :(

Funny how semantic software that was supposed to eliminate interoperability problems has caused a new batch of interoperability problems.  Some of it is a direct example of Murry's "flag planting" but some is that there's always a domain boundary people hit or adaptations that need to be made to make applications efficient in a particular context.

> Solutions that rely on adapting people to software are deeply
> problematic. 

Hard enough getting people adapting to people correctly! :)

However, that's exactly what we're talking about here.  There's got to be some level of broad agreement on how you bridge the semantic silos so that these identifiers are truly interoperable--and these are as much people issues as they are technology issues.  Some great work has been done in this space, but I'm not convinced it's widely enough publicized so that people on the ground are aware of it--especially those of us who came to the party relatively late.

I totally agree that more emphasis in this area would be very useful!

> Hope you are having a great day!
> 

You too! :)

--
Andrew S. Townley <[email protected]>
http://atownley.org