Re: Enough already

As I read some of the recent e-mails on this forum and also some of the recent e-mails on the working group mailing list, something just dawned on me that I didn’t realize before. It gave me a possibly new insight into what may be happening in the working group discussions.

It seems that Karen is being considered by some and/or may be considering herself to be the sole or, at least, the main “voice of the user” or user advocate. She is reading the specification with the goal of trying to judge if users will be able to understand and use SHACL. And if she finds something confusing and feels it to be a strong obstacle to adoption, she believes others will feel the same way. I didn’t consider this possibility before because I find such concept to be unrealistic.

First, although each of us has opinions or may be exactly because each of us has opinions, it is impossible for a single person to play a role representing all the diverse population of different SHACL users and do so mostly based on their own judgement. I have not heard other working groups taking such an approach. Has anyone? The best Karen could hope to accomplish (if she has indeed been assigned such a role in the working group) is to interview a statistically significant (50+) number of users who have been using SHACL, collect their input and present it to the working group. 

Second, is this something a working group needs/wants to formally do with the first release of the standard? The adoption will hopefully grow and expand, so will the experience of users using it. With this, the feedback may change. I know, for example, when XML first came out, it was new and seemed hard and mysterious to many first time users. Further, we are already getting user feedback directly. A few have recently posted positive feedback to this e-mail forum. And more hopefully will do so soon. 

I hear directly or indirectly from some user of SHACL every week. Some have questions about one aspect or another. So far, they have been easily satisfied with simple answers. I have not heard about any back and forth where a user was so confused or perplexed that answering or explaining required more than a single e-mail. I have also not heard about a potential user who looked at SHACL and said: I can’t figure out how to use it, it is broken, it is so over complex that I do not see myself using it. I am not saying such people do not exist. This will be a new thing in the world to many and some people will reject or feel flabbergasted by anything new. But I have not heard such feedback. That is unless we are talking about people who have already decided they will use ShEx and nothing else, even if it satisfies all their requirements, would do.

From what I have seen, there is a growing community of SHACL users already and they seem to be happy campers. A user survey is needed, I can help to get this started.

Irene

> On Dec 12, 2016, at 7:03 PM, Holger Knublauch <holger@topquadrant.com> wrote:
> 
> In these mailing lists and during the discussions, voices "against" something are much more likely than positive voices. Even if there are a couple of people agreeing with the issues that someone raises, this doesn't mean that the silent majority of users find these issues relevant. We can spend another couple of years word-smithing and cleaning up corner cases, but at some stage we need to terminate. Every spec has flaws, esp in its first version.
> 
> Holger
> 
> 
> On 13/12/2016 4:50, Arnaud Le Hors wrote:
>> For what it's worth I ought to say that claiming that "There is a very vocal minority (of one) holding this debate hostage" is from my point of view a mischaracterization.
>> 
>> If Peter was the only one to raise issues and those were considered minor by the WG it would hardly represent a hurdle. The reality is that most of Peter's issues resonate with some WG members and resolving them is more often anything but easy.
>> 
>> As Karen pointed out we're interested in implementation feedback. Are you implementing SHACL in your product? Can you please tell us more? How much do you support: Core, Full (Core+SPARQL)?
>> 
>> Thanks.
>> --
>> Arnaud  Le Hors - Senior Technical Staff Member, Open Web & Blockchain Technologies - IBM Cloud
>> 
>> 
>> Terry Roach <troach@capsi.com.au> <mailto:troach@capsi.com.au> wrote on 12/10/2016 05:22:51 AM:
>> 
>> > From: Terry Roach <troach@capsi.com.au> <mailto:troach@capsi.com.au>
>> > To: public-rdf-shapes@w3.org <mailto:public-rdf-shapes@w3.org>
>> > Date: 12/10/2016 05:26 AM
>> > Subject: Enough already
>> > 
>> > If I may interject in this debate, this all seems quite bewildering to me.
>> > 
>> > I am a pragmatic, practitioner of semantic technologies;  is a mere 
>> > consumer of W3C standards. Our company builds products based on your
>> > ideas and so maybe I am not accustomed to how these things get 
>> > cooked up, but take a look at yourselves please. Somebody needs to 
>> > inject a dose of reality into this conversation.
>> > 
>> > We are very interested in the SHACL standard making it’s way through
>> > this process and becoming endorsed so that we can commit to it in 
>> > our products. There will be no better test of the value and 
>> > robustness of SHACL than the community of semantic developers 
>> > applying it in practice. 
>> > 
>> > No standard is born perfect, of course it will evolve and I expect 
>> > we will find issues that will surely be addressed as it matures. But
>> > it needs to get out of the door. 
>> > 
>> > Perfection is the enemy of innovation here.
>> > 
>> > If there are any substantive issues with the standard, then of 
>> > course robust debate is great, but that should be in the form of a 
>> > positive, constructive suggestions. I am just seeing myopic, 
>> > pedantic grandstanding here.
>> > 
>> > There is a very vocal minority (of one) holding this debate hostage 
>> > and it is a travesty that the enormous effort that has gone into 
>> > this piece of work is being held up in this way.
>> > 
>> > Enough already
>> > 
>> > Terry Roach 
>> > Chief Executive Officer
>> >  
>> > [image removed] 
>> > 
>> > Suite 105, International Business Centre, Australia Technology Park 
>> > 2 Cornwallis St. 
>> > Eveleigh NSW 2015, Australia 
>> > 
>> > M:  +61 421 054 804 
>> > troach@capsi.com.au <mailto:troach@capsi.com.au>
>> > www.capsi.com.au <x-msg://159/www.capsi.com.au>
>> > 
>> > 
>> 
>