RE: working around the identity crisis

> -----Original Message-----
> From: www-rdf-interest-request@w3.org
> [mailto:www-rdf-interest-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of ext Sandro Hawke
> Sent: 16 November, 2004 22:46
> To: Miles, AJ (Alistair)
> Cc: public-esw-thes@w3.org; www-rdf-interest@w3.org
> Subject: Re: working around the identity crisis 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > What I would really like is a clear and up-to-date case 
> from each camp
> > stating (as briefly and objectively as possible) reasons 
> why a [hash/slash]
> > URI *should not* be used to identify a thesaurus concept.
> 
> What I think you want is http://esw.w3.org/topic/HashVsSlash and the
> linked pages like HashURI and SlashURI.  These are wiki pages; people
> are invited to help improve them, but they've been pretty stable for a
> year or so.
> 
>       -- sandro


Unfortunately, those pages seem to be authored by those
with a shared viewpoint, despite the occasional comment
here and there. I've tried to add comments to
wikis in the past, but I don't consider wiki's or blogs to
be proper vehicles for addressing hotly debated topics.

E.g. The line in the cutesy program on the first page:

30 PRINT "But now you're conflating web pages with properties and classes."

is simply wrong, and misleading. Yet the energy necessary to 
co-edit such a page to correct such errors is simply too 
great, IMO, especially since anyone can go and discard my
contributions and thus I've simply wasted my time.

Discussion lists such as these provide a public record that
is searchable and referencable. Occasional summaries of arguments
and examples are, of course, a good idea. And also serve as
useful input to continued debate and hopefully help achieve
concensus.

I think it's fair to say that those wiki pages present
a particular side of this debate, and try to give some
degree of coverage to the opposing side, but do not really
succeed.

And I myself would not be interested in getting into some
form of editorial flip-flop war where I make changes, 
someone else disagrees, deletes my changes, adds their
own, I change those, then my updates get removed/changed,
etc. etc.

If you intend to reflect a summary of both sides of this
debate, then you should include quite a few references
to past threads and/or summarize key points made in those
threads. That's not to in any way undervalue the effort
you and others have put into producing those wiki pages,
only that I do not consider them to be unbiased or to
reflect both sides of the debate equally well.

Just because noone has edited/changed/augmented what you
or others may have written on those wikis does not mean
that they reflect any kind of concensus, or a complete and
accurate view of the debate. Wikis are easily percieved
as semi-private property, and thus simply do not function
as a truly neutral forum. 

Not wanting to offend in any way, but I feel the need to
caution those individuals invited to consider the content of
such wikis -- that just because they may claim to present
both sides of this debate, or just because they are hosted
on the W3C site (another senstive issue entirely) that does 
not mean that they are complete or correct (not that I think 
that the authors necessarily claim any such thing), or 
represent the kind of concensus view that e.g. a WG publication
would be expected to embody, or carry the weight and force 
of the W3C simply because that is where they are hosted.

I for one have a number of issues and concerns with the
materials presented on the above referenced, and other,
wikis about this debate,  both regarding their completeness 
and their apparent bias, but do not consider it optimal
to attempt to change that content directly.

Google may prove to be the better, more neutral source of 
information concerning this debate ;-)

Patrick

Received on Friday, 19 November 2004 12:46:55 UTC