Re: VIAF contributor model

On Mon, Nov 1, 2010 at 3:11 PM, Karen Coyle <kcoyle@kcoyle.net> wrote:

> Dan offers to add to foaf, but as Diane and I warned in our blog posts [2]
> it's not so much a question of adding terms but how to manage the
> vocabulary-building process. FRAD comes out of a slow process that affects
> tens of thousands of institutions. My advice to Dan is: you don't want that
> process stepping on the light-footedness of foaf.

Yup, I really wouldn't want to make FOAF carry that burden. FRAD and
family need to happen at their own pace. Similarly with standards for
modern addressbook data formats (vcard, portablecontacts etc.), people
have sometimes suggested that FOAF should provide *the* standard
there. But I much prefer to stand back and let those guys sort out
exactly what addressbook and social network interchange needs (helping
a bit where possible), and then reflect important parts of that
consensus into FOAF. Today's social network sites will be tomorrow's
digital archives, I just try to position FOAF somewhere in the middle.
It's best to be guided by the data I think; if there's a lot of data
coming to the public sphere, focus on finding common patterns in it
and make sure the vocabularies we have at hand allow the data to find
as wide an audience as possible.

As far as FOAF goes, I'd like to have machine readable views of public
Web data showing all of science, art, culture, history as a giant
navigable, debate-able Web of interconnected human activities and
artifacts. A big job, but one that the Web makes possible. So FOAF,
SKOS, DC, FR** and dozens of other RDF vocabs have some role to play
in getting there.

cheers,

Dan



> kc
>
> [1] http://metadataregistry.org/schema/show/id/24.html
> [2] http://kcoyle.blogspot.com/search/label/FOAF  or
> http://managemetadata.org/blog/2010/09/
>
>
>>
>> -Ross.
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Karen Coyle
> kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
> ph: 1-510-540-7596
> m: 1-510-435-8234
> skype: kcoylenet
>
>
>

Received on Monday, 1 November 2010 14:24:08 UTC