RE: CFC: Basic Roles Proposal

Rob – My thoughts on 3.1 really have to do with  the question I asked yesterday.  It seems to me that we do not have a clear understanding of the distinction between a motivation and role.  (*semantic* distinction, that is. We understand that a  motivation applies at the annotation level and a role at the body level.)

It seems on the surface that you can have any of the following for a given annotation:

1.      a motivation on the annotation. and no roles on bodies

2.      a motivation on the annotation and roles for the bodies

3.      no motivation, roles on the bodies

4.      no nothing

None of the examples in 3.1 shows a motivation and of course that’s because it’s about roles.  But I think there should be examples that show both a motivation and one or more roles so we can better understand the semantic relationship.

For example in 3.1.7 there are three roles (1) comparing (2) antecedent (3)  subsequent

Clearly “comparing” is semantically the same as a motivation and “antecedent” and “subsequent” are not.  So the annotation would have the same meaning if “comparing” were to be listed as the motivation with no role assigned to the body.

When this whole business came up (motivations on individual bodies) it was to support the ability to, in a sense, combine a lot of annotations into a single annotation, for efficiency.  I think that idea was rejected, but the idea morphed into the ability for  bodies to have “roles” in support of the (annotation-level) motivation.   Is this an accurate characterization?

So that’s  my mental model, only one motivation (in the semantic sense) and the roles are in support of the motivation.  Of course the examples don’t  support my mental model.

Take 3.1.1 for example.  The role is “commenting”.  That could be expressed with commenting as the motivation, with no role on the body.   I’m afraid that when people read this they are going to wonder what is the semantic difference between these two annotations, when there is none.

So I would say, for one thing, if there is only one body, it should not have a role, but that role should instead be expressed as a motivation. I would say further that there should be no roles expressed unless there is an annotation-level motivation that the roles support.

I apologize if my idea seems a bit radical at this late stage but I do think this is worth some discussion. At the very least, there should be examples that show these various relationships among motivations and roles.

Ray



From: Robert Sanderson [mailto:azaroth42@gmail.com]
Sent: Sunday, August 23, 2015 6:38 PM
To: Web Annotation
Subject: Re: CFC: Basic Roles Proposal


+1.

The proposal fixes many issues in the model, in a consistent and rational manner.

On Sun, Aug 23, 2015 at 3:37 PM, Robert Sanderson <azaroth42@gmail.com<mailto:azaroth42@gmail.com>> wrote:

Dear all,

This is a Call for Consensus (CfC) to update the working group's Annotation Model deliverable according to the changes specified in section 3.1 of this document:
    http://w3c.github.io/web-annotation/model/wd/roles.html


Please respond to this CfC by the 1st of September 2015.  Any response is valuable, even just a simple +1.  Silence will be considered as agreement.  This CfC will complete the process discussed in last week's teleconference.

Thanks in advance,

Rob

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



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