Re: Remarks on process and workload

On Wed, Dec 11, 2013 at 3:34 AM, Antoine Isaac <aisaac@few.vu.nl> wrote:
> Hi all
>
> On 12/11/13 1:17 AM, Corey A Harper wrote:
>>
>> [...] I don't have the time to put in the hard work hashing out the
>> details of how to reconcile and render compatible the 3 or 4 (or 5?)
>> different proposals on the table. I really don't think they're that far
>> apart. I wish I had more bandwidth to work on it.
>>
>> Given that I don't I believe it's probably best that I back out of the
>> conversation now and not join tomorrow's call.
>>
>> Regrets for that, and thank you all for the work you've put in on this.
>
>
>
> I'm on a similar position.
>
> When we started the group I had the feeling that this was about the mapping
> of existing data (and the vocabularies that go with them) to schema.org,
> possibly suggesting extensions to schema.org when there was a big miss
> there.
>
> In this respect one recent addition to the Periodical thread, i.e. trying to
> connect to Bibo, fits quite well.
>
> But the entire discussion, where people think of what periodicals/volumes
> are, and then compare it to what they are in an already existing and
> complete approach (comics), then try to map to an existing ontology (Bibo)
> and then question again what periodicals and volume and citations are,
> that's just too much.
>
> To be clear: I respect very much the work being done. And I'm sure it is
> useful to the community in the end. It's just that I too don't have the time
> to contribute that much, unfortunately.

These comments are both fair and concerning. I don't want to lose the
expertise that Antoine, Corey, and others bring to the table; the
periodicals proposal has evolved a _ton_ for the better thanks to the
discussion by the group.

I am in the extremely fortunate position of being able to contribute a
lot of time to the schema.org effort right now. Now that I (finally)
feel reasonably comfortable with schema.org, RDFa, RDFS, and some of
the related ontologies, I would like to be able to contribute towards
this group's goals (and I believe I have been). But I don't want to
waste my time, or anyone else's time.

The subject of your email, Antoine, invoking "Process", definitely
hits home. With periodicals, I have been trying to keep a focused
scope in the hopes of producing tangible results, while still
encouraging and incorporating feedback and suggestions. My approach
for that has been to try and spawn new discussion threads where
something might be able to be focused on separately, independently,
and later, in the hopes that we can maintain focus and achieve small
wins. I'm not sure that that approach has been working or helping or
the most efficient, though.

That said, I apologize for adding complexity to the discussions by
trying to synthesize the comics proposal with our periodicals
proposal, once the existence of the comics proposal was reraised on
this list. As an existing proposal, it felt unfair for us to put
forward a subset--especially if we changed the underpinnings to their
comics class. And I also thought that as a proposal that had been
brought forward for adoption, the comics side of it would have been a
bit more ready to go (to be fair, the comics proposal was one of the
first to be brought forward to schema.org). I would like to continue
the work on comics, but as a follow-on to core periodicals. If the
group would like me to work with Peter and Henry on that outside of
schemabibex entirely, I can do that.

Aligning the periodical-related portions of Bibo seemed like a clear,
fast win that would strengthen the proposal. Aligning the rest of the
ontology... well, yeah, that's why I suggested deferring that work to
later.

We do need _some_ mechanism of working efficiently towards common
goals that allows for participants to say "I don't understand X; can
you explain?" or "I think this part of the proposal would be better if
it did Y instead, because of A & B" or "I think that this use case
does not apply here; maybe it should be attached to a different
proposal." or "Okay, let's wrap this up: do we agree or disagree with
this?"

To avoid misunderstandings, I've tried to be very explicit in
describing my rationale for particular positions. I also suspect at
some point someone (probably myself, in a state of forgetfulness) will
want to catch up on what we mulled over and how we came to decisions.
But I recognize that verbosity adds to the cognitive load as well ("Oh
no, another long email from Dan...").

To try to reach consensus, or at least a better understanding of what
challenges remain towards achieving consensus, I've tried soliciting
feedback for the proposal, first on Dec. 4th, and then again
yesterday, explicitly asking for concrete & constructive criticism
that can be acted on in the hopes that we could shake out most of the
remaining details before our next call. The most recent call for
feedback got one reply--from myself. That's hard to interpret; I would
go with "not enough time for responses", except there many other
messages on different threads that came after it.

I've been trying, but I feel like I've been failing. So, please: if my
communication style or approach to putting together proposals is part
of the problem, let me know how I can improve.

And... apologies for another long email :/

Dan

Received on Wednesday, 11 December 2013 11:13:10 UTC