Re: Afghanistan War Diary as topic map in Maiana

Hi Lutz,

I am not eager to feed trolls who think that I am against all TMLab
projects. As said, WikiLeaks to Topic Maps would be a Good Thing. And
all Topic Maps enthusiasts hope that WikiLeaks would use Topic Maps.

Let's assume this as a preamble for the following statements.

> at the first glance you are right. You see a transformation of the
> wikileaks information (published as CSV) into a topic map. Even this 
> small step allows you to make more complex queries than you can usually
> formulate against a spreadsheet.

This isn't true. I can extract the same information in Excel (or any
other bla bla spreadsheet app).

> The more interesting point - and now we are approaching the added value
> - is the possibility to merge background knowledge into the diary.

How can I add
<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/wiki/George_W._Bush> to the
map? Well, I can add the topic "George W. Bush", but would it merge?
No.

A less esoteric example: Would I find "Afghanistan" in the provided
topic map? Maybe. I am not a member of Maiana anymore, but I don't see
an "Afghanistan" topic.

You create "SURV Other" two times. No problem with that. Maybe that's
the "Atom Patrick problem", but treating everything as an occurrence
(with logically the same type but treated as a different type) may be
a problem?

> And in Maiana each user can create its own containers to add specific
> background knowledge to the war diary.

I don't care about Maiana, I care about Topic Maps.

[...]
> Do you now see some added value?

Yes, I see a limited value.

Best regards,
Lars
-- 
Semagia 
<http://www.semagia.com>

<http://www.topicmaps.de/mailinglist/> German Topic Maps mailing list
<http://tinytim.sourceforge.net/> Open Source Topic Maps engine
<http://mappa.semagia.com/> Mappa - Python Topic Maps engine