- From: Jim Hendler <hendler@cs.rpi.edu>
- Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 15:13:24 -0500
- To: Bijan Parsia <bparsia@cs.man.ac.uk>
- Cc: public-owl-comments@w3.org, "Ralph R. Swick" <swick@w3.org>, W3C OWL Working Group <public-owl-wg@w3.org>
OK, seems to me that the response was signed off on by the WG, and since it said "The working group was unsure" I assumed it was approved by the WG - nevertheless, I see where the misunderstanding was. If the WG approves the response with the offending sentence removed, and submits is as an updated LC comment, I will be happy to respond as to whether I accept the technical substance or not... JH On Feb 19, 2009, at 11:59 AM, Bijan Parsia wrote: > On 19 Feb 2009, at 15:02, Jim Hendler wrote: > >> Bijan- >> I understand clearly that you (personally) would not mean it in an >> insulting way, but coming from a WG, in an official form, implying >> somehow that if I knew more (or maybe less) or came from a >> different background I'd have "gotten it" seems to me to be very >> out of place in this sort of comment. > > As the person who deliberately put it in, I don't understand why. > You introduced the idea that your *sort* of expertise was relevant: > "<http://www.w3.org/mid/3D9CD8CA-8994-4703-93EF-2E0753B2BF8E@cs.rpi.edu > > > """"However, given two of us who had PhDs in AI and long experience > with DBs took a while to work through the semantics, and didn't get > the idea of these examples without the emails from you folks, I do > think documenting it will be important...""" > > I certainly didn't mean to imply that you had too *little* > expertise, but just that your *confusion* may have stemmed from > thinking "too hard" about it, as someone who is a designer of > ontology languages. It's not clear to me that we should optimize > specs for *that* case, rather than a more general audience for whom, > perhaps, the question would not even arise. > > I see that my terseness about it in this message could be read > differently. > >> My earlier response to you, which you quoted, was meant to be >> focused on the specific sentence under discussion at that time, and >> I wanted to indicate it would be a good addition. > > Sure, but I hope you understand why I read it otherwise. This is why > I would like to stress that the working group, as a whole or the > rest of the participants, is not at fault. I insistent that you were > fine with the draft text as written because I thought, based on that > email, that you were. > >> I still feel that the comment is inappropriate - it somehow implies >> that if I had a different background I'd have seen this from the >> original documents. > > Or not noticed it as a problem. Yes, that was what implied because I > wasn't clear that that wasn't the case and it was a relevant aspect > of my design of the fix. > > I reiterate that I am solely responsible for the *group's* being > unsure (i.e., it was unsure because *I* was unsure). The working > group deferred to me because I said, forcefully, that you were ok > with this response. > >> I feel that I have a pretty strong background with respect to the >> semantic web and to knowledge representation, and having helped >> chair the first Web Ontology Working Group, I think I have a pretty >> good background in OWL (in fact, I even coauthored what is now the >> best selling book in the area). I would also point out that in >> email threads going back to the beginning of this WG there was >> discussion of Easy Keys essentially being a way to deal with the >> issue of inverseFunctional datatype properties, and thus there was >> an expectation that doesn't seem to me to be from some "other >> perspective" that, like inverseFunctional, the key property would >> imply a domain restriction > > InverseFunctionality does not imply a domain restriction. For example: > <http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-owl2-syntax-20081202/#Inverse-Functional_Object_Properties > > > > """InverseFunctionalProperty( a:fatherOf ) Each object can have at > most one father.""" > > There's no domain implication that I can see. > >> - and if you read my original response, you'll see that while I was >> asking why this was the case, I was also pointing the editorial >> problem of recognizing that this was not the case from the >> documents (required fairly careful analysis of multiple sections) >> which doesn't seem to me to have anything to do with my expertise. > > That all seems reasonable. The reason I even thought about it this > way was because of your final comment in your thread. I was asking > myself whether it wasn't the fact that you were *too deep* into OWL, > databases, etc. that led you this way. > >> Once the advantage of the solution in the WG was pointed out, I >> certainly agreed that the design was okay, and my comment was >> turned into an LC comment since it was felt at that point to be the >> documentation issue that was in discussion. >> I know some on the WG will feel my response was an over-reaction, > > Regardless, your ire should be directed to me. > >> but I did get email from a colleague on the fact that this public >> comment seemed to be a polite pejorative, and that LC responses are >> part of the official record available to the public and to the AC >> for review during the PR decision, and thus I felt it needed to be >> pointed out in a manner that would not only remove the passage from >> the response in question, but also remind the WG that these are not >> casual emails, but public responses. > > This is, again, a criticism of me. I wrote the response and wrote it > this way. I championed it. I championed this specific bit of it > because I thought (wrongly) that it was helpful. I insisted that > there was no problem with it because I thought I had your buy in. > >> I appreciate your personal response, but I still do not feel it >> appropriate to respond technically until I see both a new response >> without the comment in the LC comments and a a publicly readable >> apology from the WG that I could point colleagues to if, like the >> one who pointed this out to me, they are wondering why the original >> comment was included. > > Well, I think the better solution would have been to respond > privately and get the mail deleted from the archives. The second > response could have included a note apologizing for a "draft" having > been sent. I guess we're past that now. > >> Sorry to ask for WG time for something seemingly so trivial, but >> perhaps it will help remind people that we are not in an academic >> forum where debate and personalization is par for the course, but >> rather in an industrial standardization effort trying to create a >> durable specification that will be of interest to the more than 400 >> companies in the W3C consortium, and if we are successful, >> eventually to the 1.4 billion people (more than 20% of humanity) >> who use the Web. > > Well, first, it wasn't a personal comment, technically speaking. > That is, my intent wasn't speak about *you* in particular (any more > than your intent in mentioning your experience above was to be about > *you* but about a larger class of people, i.e., if people like you > had trouble, then so too would people with less expertise). > Similarly, someone else, with a strong DB background, complained > about keys not being functional, like database keys. It's not clear > to me that their finding that disconcerting is likely in the less > expert audience for this document. > > Regardless, if someone else read it as dissing you, then it is > unfortunate and would have been better not included. If you are > concerned about this sort of thing, then I suggest you suggest to > the chairs that I not be charged with writing responses as it seems > that I am prone to this sort of thing. > > Cheers, > Bijan. > "If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?." - Albert Einstein Prof James Hendler http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~hendler Tetherless World Constellation Chair Computer Science Dept Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY 12180
Received on Thursday, 19 February 2009 20:14:17 UTC