- From: <editor@content-wire.com>
- Date: Wed, 4 Oct 2006 06:18:08 -0400
- To: semantic-web@w3.org
- Cc: hamish@hamishharvey.com
This thread is bringing up another question for me. I am working on a couple of ontologies (that include defining a conceptual framework, metadata and controlled vocabularies to ensure consistency across distributed development teams) but somhow i never considered myself as part of the documentaiton team. Should I? I consider myself as part of the referential consistency team. Please advise thanks Paola Di Maio ----- Original Message ----- From: "Hamish Harvey" <hamish@hamishharvey.com> To: "Karl Dubost" <karl@w3.org> Cc: "Semantic Web" <semantic-web@w3.org> Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 4:33 PM Subject: Re: Controlled Vocabularies Aid Translation and Content Management > > Karl, > > In Europe, and particularly in research projects funded by the > European Commission, I predict the gradual emergence of a new language > in a process of divergent evolution. Projects set out to establish > glossaries, even "languages", for the subject area, explicitly or > implicitly. The debate around the definitions of terms can take place > with remarkably little input from native English speakers. The result > is usages which (sometimes subtly, sometimes not) conflict with > regular English. A controlled vocabulary established in this sort of > context may well suffer the same fate: it will look like English, but > will be misinterpreted by people who have a good understanding of > English. > > I was heartily entertained, and not a little frustrated, a year or two > ago by a heated debate about the meaning of a word which appeared > repeatedly in the description of work of an EC funded project. Here > another pressure was at work: a definition needed to be imparted to > the word which reflected what the project could actually produce. The > word, in this case, was "toolbox"; having no very firm meaning when > used metaphorically it was of course susceptible to misdefinition. The > definition established in the end was essentially that of the term > "catalogue". > > The article Karl links to makes some good points about good writing > style, even providing supporting examples. It seems to make only > unsupported assertions about the benefits of use of controlled > vocabularies, however. Good writing style is a matter of education and > training. If the creators of technical documentation don't see any > need to invest in that, surely it is a pipe dream to imagine they will > invest considerably more to establish and ensure the effective use of > controlled vocabularies? > > Generally, it would surely be better for documentation writers to > think hard about how what they write might be interpreted by a variety > of human readers than to expend effort ensuring it conforms with some > set of rules. It will be possible to write badly to any set of rules > sufficiently flexible to write documentation to. > > Cheers, > Hamish > > -- > Hamish Harvey > Research Associate, School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences, > Newcastle University -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ .
Received on Wednesday, 4 October 2006 10:21:32 UTC