Re: Motivation: Gerund or Infinitive

Apologies for missing the call.

I'm in favor of sticking with the current form:

* backwards compatibility with existing OA systems
* the change is purely cosmetic, rather than other changes to date which
have been justified by technical requirements
* for consistency, changing the motivations' URIs would mean changing the
relationship as well
* confusion between the infinitive (without 'to') and a similar noun seems
to be similar to the confusion of seeing a gerund

And notably:

* It's just a URI :) It could be completely opaque, but that would make
remembering which is which much harder. So the form is just a convention
that was adopted.

* Extensions could mint URIs that happen to take an infinitive form (or any
other!), and relate them to the core set in the method outlined already via
the skos relationships. We already have a way to reconcile similar, or
identical, concepts between ontologies.

If we do decide to change it, I would prefer being explicit with the
infinitive:  toReview, toLink, toComment, toTag, etc. to avoid confusion
with the noun.

Rob


On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 4:56 PM, Benjamin Young <bigbluehat@hypothes.is>
wrote:

> +1
>
> On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 4:53 PM, Bill Kasdorf <bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com>
> wrote:
>
>>  The basic problem is with the English language, which often uses the
>> same word as a noun and a verb. Why don't we pick a language that doesn't
>> do that? ;-) –Bill Kasdorf
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Benjamin Young [mailto:bigbluehat@hypothes.is]
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, February 04, 2015 4:49 PM
>> *To:* Denenberg, Ray
>> *Cc:* Web Annotation
>> *Subject:* Re: Motivation: Gerund or Infinitive
>>
>>
>>
>> Well... :)
>>
>>
>>
>> It would always technically *be* a verb, but I'm not sure it'd be clear
>> in this JSON.
>>
>>
>>
>> ```
>>
>> {
>>
>>   "motivatedBy": "comment"
>>
>> }
>>
>> ```
>>
>>
>>
>> Really, though, the "to comment" form could be made as a custom set of
>> SKOS Concepts for using the infinitive form:
>>
>> http://www.w3.org/TR/annotation-model/#extending-motivations
>>
>>
>>
>> But I'd want to see that available only as an extension and not mixed
>> into the `oa` namespace as that would cause yet more confusion, I'm afraid.
>>
>>
>>
>> Anyway. :) Saying the same thing different ways, so I'll let others weigh
>> in.
>>
>>
>>
>> Laters,
>>
>> Benjamin
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 3:57 PM, Denenberg, Ray <rden@loc.gov> wrote:
>>
>> From: Benjamin Young [mailto:bigbluehat@hypothes.is]
>>
>> *> oa:motivatedBy comment*
>>
>> *> has potentially different meaning than*
>>
>> *> oa:motivatedBy commenting*
>>
>> *> *
>>
>> *> The first (to me at least) implies that my annotation was motivated by
>> a prior*
>>
>> *> comment *
>>
>>
>>
>> Only if you take “comment” to be a noun, but the proposal is to use the
>> infinitive form (where the "to" part of the infinitive is implied) thus it
>> would always be understood to be a verb.
>>
>>
>>
>> So:
>>
>>
>>
>> oa:motivatedBy  "comment"
>>
>> says:
>>
>> " motivatedBy   to comment"
>>
>>
>>
>> Admittedly this doesn't sound as good as if the predicate were (as we
>> thought yesterday) oa:motivation.  in that case it would say:
>> "motivation: to comment".   Actually I’d like to change to predicate (back)
>> to oa:motivation.
>>
>>
>>
>> Ray
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>


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