Re: About WG process Re: the role of public-rdf-shapes@w3.org

WG members,

I think this is alarming:

On 29/09/2016 6:47, Peter F. Patel-Schneider wrote:
> The worst result of the RDF Data Shapes Working Group, from a W3C viewpoint
> and probably from the viewpoint of users of the Semantic Web, is a W3C
> Recommendation on SHACL that is full of problems.  The second-worst result of
> the RDF Data Shapes Working Group, from a W3C viewpoint and probably from the
> viewpoint of users of the Semantic Web, is a W3C Candidate Recommendation on
> SHACL that is full of problems and does not progress to recommendation.
>
> What is going to make these undesirable results most likely is not adequately
> addressing comments that the working group receives on its working drafts.  If
> the working group does not have the resources to consider and respond to such
> comments it should just quit now.
>

I interpret this as saying "better no SHACL at all than a SHACL 'full of 
problems'". Of course, the definition of 'full of problems' is subject 
to personal opinion and preferences, and some people have different 
tolerance to fuzziness than others, and some people see problems where 
others don't. While I agree that some issues that have been pointed out 
were indeed problems that needed to be fixed, others are in my personal 
opinion rather editorial. In fact I believe only two technical changes 
were made so far based on the recent comments - adding DISTINCT to some 
SPARQL queries and the removal of the shapesGraph argument from 
sh:hasShape. The other suggestions merely lead to editorial 
clarifications. And on some reported issues, it is perfectly valid to 
have diverging opinions. The person reporting an issue is not 
automatically "right".

I believe SHACL fills an important gap in the semantic technology 
landscape. Some people may theoretically see SHACL as an unwelcome 
competition to the established technologies that they have worked with 
in the past. While I hope this isn't happening, and I am not claiming 
this is happening here, the WG should IMHO stay alert to this 
possibility, and that the rules of the formal W3C process may be used 
against us.

Holger

PS: Thanks, Karen, for starting the page to track the comments. I may 
have more time next week to continue looking into them.

Received on Wednesday, 28 September 2016 23:39:30 UTC