Re: RDF Interest Group: mailing lists etc... (long)

At 05:02 AM 10/10/00 +0100, Dan Brickley wrote:
>It's about a year since I shut down RDF-DEV, my old list for RDF
>developers, and about a year since RDF mailing list traffic started
>taking off seriously. For the record, it's almost exactly 3 years since
>RDF was launched on the world. IMHO, www-rdf-interest has in the
>last last year proved an interesting and admirably flame-free place to
>discuss RDF apps and specs, but has tended to (a) revisit old topics
>with no closure / sense of progress, and (b) "geek out" somewhat, to
>detriment of those folk interested more in applications than
>specification.

I would like to suggest that this should not be seen as a sign of 
failure.  RDF is a whole new area for a lot of people, and I think one of 
the most valuable services performed is to bring newcomers to a common 
level of understanding.

This is not, of itself, sufficient, but I do think it's necessary as a 
springboard for future development of RDF and its applications, in which I 
think we all have an interest.

(I could cite examples from other standards related activity in which there 
has been a long gestation period of little visible progress, but effective 
community building, followed by bursts of extreme productivity it terms of 
creating new specifications.)

#g


------------
Graham Klyne
(GK@ACM.ORG)