Re: adding pubmed ids to BAMS

Well, stepping back a bit from the task at hand, when we looked back and attempted to understand why such strong pre existing demand existed for the WWW that led to wide adoption ("phases of e-commerce" '97 if memory serves), it was in part ironically the need for individuality and expression of same within an increasingly crowded world and social medium, to include global economic drivers, that provided sufficient reason to learn html and obtain URLs. Similarly for orgs, and we've all been trying to survive the data tsunami since.

Fast forward a decade- to expect wide adoption by organizations of universal standards in ontological languages, a balancing act between needs of universality with the need for orgs to differentiate in order to survive. 

If there is one thing we've learned in knowledge systems (and org reform work) relative to adoption and participation (beyond the minority), one needs to align (or realign) interests between the individual, the org, and society. Standardization being primarily of the latter, it must consider interests of the other two and v/v. I realize the W3C and others do, and that the balance is always challenging given the practical need for consensus building, however I think it's prudent to error on the side of empowering the org and individual to provide granularity, and to maintain adaptability as much as possible. Particularly given the evolutionary history of descriptive languages and levels of adoption, which I consider to be sufficiently regrettable not to have engaged. I rather agree with David's statement below- a core philosophy of our product dev efforts, which we aim to do by restricting the choices of intent. But that's not necessarily a standards issue, provided that the standard doesn't prevent same. BTW I would also agree with those who suggest that the motivation in LS is perhaps the essential energy required to achieve equilibrium, even with some dis... - Mark


> From: Alan Ruttenberg
> . . .
> 2) I think that URIs should function first as unique identifiers, and
> only if possible, as elements of user interface. . . . .

I basically agree with this, but I think it is possible to strike
balance, since humans *do* still need to look at these URIs sometimes
(for debugging for example).  If a URI contains at least a small human
readable hint of its intent, that can be very helpful.  Of course, any
human readable part should be chosen carefully so as to age well.

David Booth, Ph.D.
HP Software






  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Alan Ruttenberg 
  To: Mark Montgomery 
  Cc: Kei Cheung ; Huajun Chen @ Zhejiang University ; Jonathan Rees ; chris mungall ; public-semweb-lifesci hcls ; Suzanna Lewis ; Judith Blake ; Barry Smith ; John Barkley 
  Sent: Friday, April 20, 2007 11:47 AM
  Subject: Re: adding pubmed ids to BAMS


  On Apr 20, 2007, at 1:13 PM, Mark Montgomery wrote:


    I can see the potential for harm in attempting to zoom in too far on granularity in standardization efforts (understanding the appeal) and would therefore vote for prudent equilibrium between adaptability and fixed. A bit messier perhaps to purposely engineer on the side of caution, but so too are most institutions that experience wide adoption coming to my mind. .02- MM



  This sounds like useful advise, but I wonder if you could expand this a bit so I can better understand what you are thinking.


  Thanks,
  Alan