[wbs] response to 'Triple terms in the subject position'

The following answers have been successfully submitted to 'Triple terms in
the subject position' (RDF-star Working Group) for Antoine Zimmermann.

> 
> 
> 
> ---------------------------------
> Your preference
> 
> ----
> What is your preference with respect to allowing triple terms in the
> subject position?
> 
> 


 * (x) allow triple terms in the subject position
 * ( ) forbid triple terms in the subject position
 * ( ) no preference either way

Comments: 



> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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> About allowing them
> 
> ----
> Regardless of your preference expressed above,
>   can you live with RDF-Concepts allowing triple terms in the subject
> position?
> 
> 


 * (x) yes, I can live with it
 * ( ) no, I formally object to allowing triple terms in the subject
position in RDF-Concepts (please develop in the 'rationale' field below).

Rationale: 



> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ---------------------------------
> About forbidding them
> 
> ----
> Regardless of your preference expressed above,
>   can you live with RDF-Concepts forbidding triple terms in the subject
> position?
> 
> 


 * ( ) yes, I can live with it
 * (x) no, I formally object to forbidding triple terms in the subject
position in RDF-Concepts

Rationale: 

All the use cases that were submitted to the WG have examples with triple
terms in subject position. Only one use case use examples with triple terms
in *object* position, but it also has occurrences in subject position. This
is not due to Peter rationalising the way UCs are described. Indeed, if one
looks at the original issues, one can see that independent submitters
spontaneously provide examples with triple terms in subject positions. In
most cases, triple terms are introduced to be the subject of the
conversation, not a related object. Also, people want to assign classes to
triple terms, which requires << ?s ?p ?o >> rdf:type ?C . Using rdfs:range
with custom properties is an alternative, but needlessly complicated.
Morevoer, the only UC that has triple terms in object position is not
planned to be supported anyway because it requires full opacity, something
that was abandonned by the semantic task force a long time ago (for
reference, it's
https://github.com/w3c/rdf-ucr/wiki/RDF-star-for-recording-commit-deltas-to-an-RDF-graph).

Besides, early implementers of RDF-star (there are at least a dozen of
them) worked with preliminary specifications that *all* require support for
triple terms in subject position. When available, their documentation show
examples *mostly* with triple terms in subject position. It is my
understand that the number of pre-standard implementations is one of the
*main* reason for starting a working group in the first place. If we tell
the early adopters that what they wanted to be standardised is not what we
will standardise, we have to have rock-solid arguments. So far, I have seen
only very brittle ones.

> 
> 
> These answers were last modified on 21 February 2025 at 10:00:45 U.T.C.
> by Antoine Zimmermann
> 
Answers to this questionnaire can be set and changed at
https://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/139681/2025-rdf-star-tripleterms-subject/
until 2025-02-26.

 Regards,

 The Automatic WBS Mailer

Received on Friday, 21 February 2025 10:03:03 UTC