Use cases

There has been some talk on telecons and the mailing list about 
developing a list of use cases for our three efforts (syntax, 
client-to-server API, server-to-server API).

I don't want to do this.

First, because there are other people doing it. I believe part of the 
charter of the IG is to develop use cases for social standards. The 
social headlights group also developed use cases for social standards 
previously.* Repeating this exercise in the working group is probably 
redundant.

Second, because it will set our schedule back for literally months. 
Constructing a use-case document with the hundreds of use cases for 
social data and APIs is a massive effort. I'd probably put the work at 
2-4 months, maybe 6 months. I think if we push our schedule well into 
2015, and our only output is a use-case document, we'll lose our momentum.

Third, because I don't think it's a useful exercise. We have a few 
examples of serialization formats (schema.org, Activity Streams 1.0 and 
2.0, Hydra, and proprietary formats) used for social software, and we 
already have some ideas of what they need to do. I think the document at 
https://www.w3.org/wiki/Socialwg/Social_syntax_requirements gives a 
pretty good idea of what we need. I would be seriously surprised if a 
use-case analysis over multiple months would produce significantly 
different requirements.

I understand if members of the WG don't think we can justify our work 
moving forward without well-documented use cases, and I'll accept if we 
need to take that path, but I think we'll need to a) consciously choose 
it and b) adjust our schedule accordingly.

We'll also need to deal with the consequences of that delay, e.g. the 
Activity Streams community may choose to follow the IETF path it was on 
before rather than waiting another few months for our use cases.

-Evan

* Harry, do you have the link that you shared previously from the 
headlights group's use cases? It might be a worthwhile substitute to 
developing our own.

Received on Saturday, 20 September 2014 16:26:39 UTC