RE: Towards a final consensus re statements & statings

Pierre-Antoine,

Thank you for picking up the gauntlet :)

It may amuse you to know that I started to respond point
by point to your message before reading it to the end.  I
had to laugh at myself when I discovered the refutations
I'd just written further down in your text.  :)

So thank you also for throwing that gauntlet back down 
again and stomping up and down on it.

I'll respond to your proposal in a separate thread.

Brian

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pierre-Antoine CHAMPIN [mailto:champin@bat710.univ-lyon1.fr]
> Sent: 08 December 2000 15:19
> To: Brian McBride
> Cc: www-rdf-interest@w3c.org
> Subject: Re: Towards a final consensus re statements & statings
> 
> 
> Brian McBride wrote:
> >
> > [a nice digest of the spec]
> > 
> > Can someone point out where m&s suggets or implies
> > that a reified statement represents a stating?
> 
> I guess M&S *suggests* more that it *implies*,
> that is probably why we had those long discussions, and why 
> I'm no more sure which option I prefer...
> I will try to point it out, and then do critics
> 
>  1.  the notion of stating is a useful notion, and M&S does 
> not mention it at all, like the authors have "forgotten" it. 
> Since the concepts of reified statement/stating are quite 
> near, it is easy to interpret that the authors... would have 
> written "stating" if they had made the distinction in the first place.
> 
>  2.  it is very easy to write a piece of RDF with two reified 
> statements being identical, and M&S does *not* make it 
> illegal. Since a statement is unique, it looks like a bug in 
> the model, unless reified statements are in fact statings.
> 
>  3.  the example for reification (namely "Ralph says that Ora 
> was the creator of the page") tastes just like a stating. One 
> would like to add the date when Ralph said that, hence the 
> problem raised by Jonas Liljegren : if I also want to state 
> that "Pierre-Antoine said that Ora was the creator of the 
> page, at another date", then which date applies to which stater ?
> 
>   st1: [Ora, creator, page]
>   st2: [st1, saidBy, Ralph]
>   st3: [st1, saidAt, 01/12/99]
>   st4: [st1, saidBy, Pierre-Antoine]
>   st5: [st1, saidAt, 01/12/00]
> 
> 
> 
> Those are the main reasons I had to think that reified 
> statements were in fact statings.
> Now, here are critics for each argument, who lead me to think 
> maybe I was wrong :
> 
>  about 1.  That argument is not the stronger one... Actually, 
> I would rather stick to the spec as long as I can... So, what 
> about 2. and 3. ? :)
> 
>  about 2.  It is actually very easy to write a piece of RDF 
> where any resource is duplicated, not only statements. And it 
> is not considered a bug... although we might have troubles 
> handling it ! Example :
>   
>   <rdf:Description about="http://www.w3.org/">
>     <as:contentQuality> Excellent </as:contentQuality>
>   </rdf:Description>
>   <rdf:Description about="urn:WWWConsortium">
>     <as:homepage>
>       <rdf:Description id="localID"/>
>     </as:homepage>
>   </rdf:Description>
>   <rdf:Descritpion about="mypage.html">
>     <as:pointsTo rdf:resource="#localID"/>
>   </rdf:Description>
> 
> where #localID and http://www.w3.org/ are in fact the same thing.
> 
>   about 3.  I already submitted the idea below on the list, 
> but I will go further : the problem raised by Jonas is not a 
> problem ! If we do consider that the reified statement is 
> really a statement rather than a stating, then the date 
> should not be a property of st1, but rather of st2 and st4 !
> 
>   st1: [Ora, creator, page]
>   st2: [st1, saidBy, Ralph]
>   st3: [st2, at, 01/12/99]
>   st4: [st1, saidBy, Pierre-Antoine]
>   st5: [st4, at, 01/12/00]
> 
> The statements st2 and st4 are actually statings, not because 
> *every* reified statement be a stating, but because of the 
> particular meaning of their predicate "saidBy".
> 
> 
> Here is my belief about the statement/stating polemics just now.
> If I forgot some important point in the pro-stating list... 
> let me know !
> 
>   Pierre-Antoine
> 
> -- 
> Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life 
> exists elsewhere in the
> universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
> (Bill Watterson -- Calvin & Hobbes)
>

Received on Friday, 8 December 2000 11:57:45 UTC