Re: Options we have with respect to the draft charters (i.e., RE: [fwd] Draft charters for work on Semantics for WS)

Quoting Bijan Parsia <bparsia@isr.umd.edu>:

> >   even XML people cannot understand RDF/OWL due to those logics
> >   and the way of RDF presentation. That's why this technology is
> >   not well accepted and deployed.   That's why I said here before,
> >   the more complex the system, the less the user. It's the same
> >   to developing semantic Web services.
> >
> > For people trying to understand, and making decisions about
> > adopting, RDF/OWL can be significantly more complex in the
> > ways that most affect their decision.
>
> But he didn't make this claim. Acutally, he made a muddle of claims (is
> it that RDF & OWL are a logic, or that they have bad presentation?)

It was "and", rather than a muddle. :)

> So, there's the claim that it *is* more complex and *why* it is more
> complex. Then the simple claim that *any* complexity reduces the number
> of users. So I believe you are reading far more into what he wrote.

I wasn't trying merely to repeat the original point.

> And complex *for what*? Are we comparing relevantly similar tasks? (For
> example.) Perhaps we should look at the relative acceptance of Relax NG
> and XML Schema?

Of course there are sometimes other factors which are more important.

> I had written a lot more, but it doesn't seem worth it. I stand by my
> point that wild-eyed bashing is no more informative than wild-eyed
> hype, and that if you are going to talk about the acceptance dimishing
> effects of complexity, you have to be fairly sophisticated in your
> discussion. Acceptance and adoption are complex things which marketers,
> economists and psychologists spend a lot of time failing to accurately
> predict. I think we should be humble in our claims.

Those are good points; however, if we end up believing that it's
too hard to tell whether we're making things better or worse,
we're likely to continue on our present course, which seems to
be to make web services increasingly complicated and complex.

-- Jeff

Received on Tuesday, 22 November 2005 18:56:42 UTC