Re: [model] Clarifying annotation architecture

On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 11:11 AM, Timothy Cole <t-cole3@illinois.edu> wrote:

> This is a challenging one, because it may set a precedent that gets
> misunderstood and then used to justify incorrect usage. (We could always go
> back to not allowing motivation or role bodies and avoid the problem
> altogether.)
>

Yep.


> But (for the reasons I've embedded in your earlier reply to Ivan)
> philosophically I disagree that Bodies created for annotation shouldn't be
> reused because they've been assigned a role. As with reuse of any resource,
> the implementer reusing must take into account all properties of the
> resource before reusing.
>

Right. Totally agreed... reusing a tag that has been assigned a uri would
be good practice! But only when it's a tag in the reusing environment too.


>  In RDF terms this comes down to whether we want to limit the Domain of
> our new oa:role predicate to oa:SpecificResource.  If we do than we
> prohibit applying a role to anything not an oa:SpecificResource.  But I
> think it would be a mistake to be this restrictive.
>

It would at least need to also have Annotation. At which point it's not
really a Domain.  So I agree that it should not be restrictive like this.


>
> They'll be different URIs, sure, but that doesn't mean that they're
> reusable.  If the motivation is associated with the body directly, then it
> cannot be reused in another annotation. You couldn't target the body to
> comment about a spelling mistake. There would be different models for blank
> node resources and resources where those blank nodes have been assigned a
> URI.  That then means understanding why there are two models... and we're
> back to the same situation... except it's more likely that people will do
> it incorrectly by inferring from the blank node case that the same will
> work with URIs.
>
>
>
> The critical question is, if these bodies are reused is it correct to say
> that they have a fixed role, i.e., "oa:commenting" and "oa:editing"
> respectively. I see nothing wrong with creating new literal resources with
> such attributes.
>
>
Agreed. They just can't be reused.


> Because these resources were created to fulfill these roles I would argue
> that the roles are intrinsic to the literal resources as I intended when I
> created them. Which does not stop someone else from using them as Targets
> in other annotations, e.g. to  annotate an error in the Literal or to
> propose a revision in the value of a Body.
>
> I've assumed that there would need to be the equivalent role for targets,
e.g. when targeting multiple resources, one might want to have different
roles to distinguish them?  If not, and role is just meaningless when used
as a target, that would work in this case.

When making an annotation, you should not assign a role directly to an
> existing resource that you are reusing as a body, but in this case the
> person creating the annotation is also creating the literal resource to use
> as a Body and should be allowed to create that literal resource with a
> fixed role, in my opinion.
>
>
Right, it still doesn't solve the issue of needing to use specific
resources for non embedded content resources, of course, but does limit the
damage.

Rob

-- 
Rob Sanderson
Information Standards Advocate
Digital Library Systems and Services
Stanford, CA 94305