Re: Provenance Model

Hi, Rob–

I strongly support reusing terminology, rather than creating our own.

On 9/28/15 4:54 PM, Robert Sanderson wrote:
>
> With the focus on making the model as approachable as possible, I'd like
> to propose that we revise the provenance model somewhat.  In particular,
> while the distinction between creator and annotator is useful from an
> academic perspective, it seems to me to be firmly in the 0.1% of use cases.
>
> Proposal:
>
> * Replace oa:annotatedBy with dcterms:creator  [creator]
> * Replace oa:annotatedAt with dcterms:created  [created]

For what it's worth, the Schema.org equivalents would be `creator` [1] 
and `dateCreated` [2].


> * Replace oa:serializedBy with prov:generatedBy  [generator]
> * Replace oa:serializedAt with prov:generated  [generated]

I think `prov:generated` [3] refers to a resulting product, rather than 
a time, as in
   :someSoftware prov:generated :someDocument;

Instead, `prov:generatedAtTime` [4] seems to be the equivalent to 
`oa:serializedAt`, which has a timestamp value.


For just this reason of easy mistakes, I prefer the terms for dates to 
unambiguously include "date" or "time" markers; so `dateCreated` rather 
than `created`, and `generatedAtTime` rather than `generated`.


> Rationale:
>
> * It's simpler, and doesn't invent new terms unnecessarily.
>
> * It solves Luc's issue with the Prov constraints as the annotator is no
> longer a generator of the annotation.
>
> * It also allows us to say that creator and created SHOULD be used with
> embedded textual bodies, rather than hand-waving like we currently do.

Opportunities for normative requirements are good!


> * It avoids the "serialization" issue of whether the client that created
> the annotation is the serializer, or the service that makes it
> available.  The activity that generates the annotation is clearly the
> user creating it, rather than the server serializing a graph into a
> particular format.
>
>
> Thoughts?

Does PROV deal with sharing? For example, if Benjamin creates an 
annotation, publishing it on Hypothes.is, and I share it on Twitter (and 
is subsequently retweeted or shared on another service), it would be 
useful to track that in some way.

`prov:Quotation` seems to start to deal with that, but in a more 
traditional referential way.

I *think* the Web Annotation answer is that when I share it, it's 
actually creating an additional annotation on Benjamin's annotation, and 
that the chain of attribution is actually tied to the reverse sequence 
of annotations. If this is indeed the case, perhaps we should be 
explicit about this, somehow.


[1] http://schema.org/creator
[2] http://schema.org/dateCreated
[3] http://www.w3.org/TR/prov-o/#generatedAtTime
[4] http://www.w3.org/TR/prov-o/#generated
[5] http://www.w3.org/TR/prov-o/#Quotation

Regards–
–Doug

Received on Tuesday, 29 September 2015 15:19:09 UTC