Re: A proposed provenance wg draft charter

On 10/19/2010 1:25 AM, Yolanda Gil wrote:
> Hi Deborah:
>
> For the record, I'd like to respond to a few things you said that put 
> in question the work that we have been doing in the group.
Thanks,
I am also responding in line below.
>
> On Oct 15, 2010, at 5:34 AM, Deborah McGuinness wrote:
>>
>> There was some disappointment in the group when we chose to map the 
>> other contender models to a single model, but most if not all 
>> understood that decision from the perspective of time.
>
> This is simply not true.  Quite the contrary, the suggestion to map 
> all models to OPM was made in the face to face meeting by someone not 
> involved in OPM, and supported enthusiastically by everyone.  Most 
> people there said that they were already working on mappings to OPM. 
>  Later on during the process, people commented on how easy the mapping 
> had been.  I think Satya, who organized the mapping effort, already 
> made this point in his response to your message.
I do not disagree that if one was going to map to one model, that OPM 
was the most obvious.  And, a number of groups had some work on  
mappings as for example would have been done if they participated in one 
of the provenance challenges.  Still I remember at least one telecon 
when the issue was raised of some wanting other mappings and it was 
mentioned that this might be done if there was time.
As I said i think everyone understood the issue of time when considering 
other mappings.  That does not mean though that just because people 
understood the issue of time, that there was not some disappointment 
that only one was used as the target mapping.  I do not think there is a 
way for the target not to provide some bias.

I think it is not correct to say that no one brought up issues with 
mappings.  Paulo brought up issues.  At a high more abstract level, 
mappings often have less issues.  When one gets into all of the details, 
mappings become more challenging since one needs to take into account 
the nuances.  I think that is the level of challenges and it is at that 
level that I think many of Paulo's concerns are directed.

I personally have done a number of other mapping efforts in the past and 
have found that to be the case before for example when I have to work 
with a number of knowledge bases.  I do not think this is a surprise, 
nor does it mean that the model is necessarily bad if there are mapping 
challenges.  It just means that models were done with different needs in 
mind and thus those different needs end up being reflected in the models.
>
>> I can not say though that i (or i expect others who were 
>> disappointed) could go along with this position in a proposed charter.
>>
>> I am sorry that this comes from someone who did not participate 
>> nearly as much as I had hoped to.
>> I had an extremely bad year with my mother's multiple 
>> hospitalizations and general overwhelming health problems and her 
>> subsequent passing.   I simply have had no choice but to put 
>> everything other than family health at a much lower priority.
>
> I am sorry that you were not able to participate more given your 
> personal circumstances, and we all understand that.  I would like to 
> say that many others in the group went through a lot of personal and 
> professional hardship, some pretty serious, but they still managed to 
> contribute.  You chose to contribute to other things during this year, 
> which is fine, but others in their own hard circumstances chose to 
> channel some of their time to contribute to this group.
>
> It is really unfortunate that other people involved in PML besides 
> yourself also chose to make only a limited investment and therefore 
> have marginal participation in the Provenance Incubator.  Since the 
> first few months of the group's activities, we have been seeking use 
> cases and requirements that illustrate the important points in the 
> design of PML, but we have not been getting much in terms of concrete 
> points of discussion.  We could not even get a PML researcher to 
> participate in the vocabulary mappings effort, someone else had to 
> figure this out so the group could move forward while being inclusive 
> of your perspective.
Sorry - perhaps I should not have brought up my personal circumstances 
since I do not want to go into much more detail on them in such a public 
forum.  I figured I needed to address the time frame though for me.  The 
last 12-18 months have been so overwhelming that while i tried to 
contribute in a number of places, I simply was unable to.  It will take 
a while longer for me to come anywhere close to recovering.  The best I 
managed to pull off most places was to contribute through other people, 
which sometimes worked.  It did not work as well here.

>
>> Fast working groups are good but I think we should focus on the 
>> outcome rather than fast.  it is not that fast precludes quality but 
>> we should not focus on fast and have that preclude other options that 
>> may be considered more representative of the broader provenance 
>> community.
>
> This is not a fair thing to say.  Noone is disregarding the outcome. 
>  Simply put, after over a year of discussions I think there is a 
> common ground and a momentum that we want to keep going and a 
> perceived immediate need for us to produce.
i do not think anyone thinks there is not momentum with people being in 
agreement that a provenance working group is useful working towards a 
recommendation.  I think that was true when the incubator started and i 
think it is more true now.
I just think that speed should not be among the most important factors 
in making decisions on how to write the charter.

>
>> I see two routes that could be taken (and of course there are more).
>> 1 - write a charter now that takes starting points as input
>> 2 - follow the owl model and form an adhoc working group whose aim it 
>> is to come up with a joint submission for the starting point.
>
> The Provenance Incubator has been working for several months on 
> looking at different perspectives on provenance in different 
> communities (including yours), gathering use cases and requirements, 
> and working on a recommendation.  I do not understand the suggestion 
> to start a working group to discuss what we have already been 
> discussing.  The current group has been mapping provenance 
> vocabularies for some time now, and I believe Paul and Luc and others 
> felt they had a starting point to put forward for discussion.
>
> By asking for a new group, you are being dismissive of the work that 
> we have been doing and continue to do in the Provenance Incubator.  We 
> have indeed been actively seeking participation of different 
> communities, discussing common grounds, and working towards 
> formulating a starting point.
>
> Whatever technical issues you have with the current charter proposal 
> are definitely worth bringing up, and I think you may have valid 
> points.  Please join the ongoing conversation and 
> contribute constructively and in concrete terms.
My main issue with the proposed charter is taking a single language as 
the starting point for refinement.
I said that in one of the initial incubator telecons, I also said that 
to Luc when we discussed this a bit at the IPAW meeting, and I still 
believe it now.

I am not saying that the incubator group did not do good work nor am I 
saying that there was not an effort to gather input from many 
communities.  I am also not trying to ask for a separate proposal for  a 
working group.  I am just asking for a refinement of the charter that 
allows for submissions of contender languages as for example the RIF 
meeting did when it started.

Deborah

>
> Yolanda
>
>