Re: Advice on Referencing External Vocabularies

For Activity Streams 2.0, the approach we have taken thus far is to
ensure that the majority of implementers would not need to rely on an
external vocabularies in order to properly grok the information being
expressed. External vocabularies can and likely should be used in
"real" applications that use AS2, but it is not a requirement and
implementers that do not understand the same set of external
vocabularies can still extract valuable information out of the data.

That does end up meaning that parts of the AS2 vocabulary overlap with
common terms from other vocabularies but that's perfectly ok. There
are mechanisms to help smooth those bits over, as necessary, at other
layers in the stack.



On Tue, Nov 3, 2015 at 11:12 PM, Doug Schepers <schepers@w3.org> wrote:
> Hi, Dan–
>
> Thanks for the discussions at TPAC.
>
> (Context: Danbri is the coordinator for Schema.org, one of the contributors
> to Dublin Core, founder of FOAF, and a long-time SemWeb expert, experienced
> in both application development and in standards. I asked him over dinner
> what approach we should use in referencing external vocabularies for our
> terms.)
>
> If you'll recall, I asked you for advice on what vocabulary to reference,
> and relative influence and usage of `dc-term`s vs Schema.org.
>
> I was surprised by your answer… If I understood correctly, you suggested not
> using any one canonical external vocabulary in our spec, but rather to offer
> a set of equivalent vocabulary terms that might be used, depending on the
> project. On the one hand, this makes sense, and is a decentralized solution;
> on the other, it doesn't really reduce the complexity, as I'd hoped to do by
> referencing only a single external vocabulary. Could you explain the
> rationale there, or correct my misunderstanding?
>
> Also, I asked about patterns of usage in `dc-term`s and Schema.org. My
> understanding was that Schema.org had already overtaken the usage of Dublin
> Core in the wider Web (though perhaps not in older libraries), and that it
> would be easiest for future developers if we used Schema.org; TimBL
> suggested during our F2F that more projects, and thus more tools, natively
> understood Dublin Core today; ultimately, I guess we need to figure out the
> right balance (or, maybe not, if we follow your advice on including multiple
> references). I think you had a more nuanced answer on usage patterns, too.
> Can you speak to that as well?
>
> All your explanations made sense to me at the time, but not enough for me to
> convey facts and explain it to others in this WG… I appreciate your helping
> us sort out some long-standing (if not particularly contentious) issues.
>
> Thanks–
> –Doug
>
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 4 November 2015 16:19:16 UTC