Re: Enough already

On 12/12/16 6:13 PM, Irene Polikoff wrote:
> 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.

I make no such claims. I am a member of the working group, and like all 
members of the working group, I make comments on the draft. These 
statements about me are inappropriate, and, quite frankly, a bit 
embarrassing.

kc

>
> 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
>> <mailto: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> wrote on 12/10/2016 05:22:51 AM:
>>>
>>> > From: Terry Roach <troach@capsi.com.au>
>>> > To: 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
>>> > www.capsi.com.au <x-msg://159/www.capsi.com.au>
>>> >
>>> >
>>>
>>
>

-- 
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet/+1-510-984-3600

Received on Tuesday, 13 December 2016 15:38:25 UTC