- From: David Booth <david@dbooth.org>
- Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2011 16:41:55 -0400
- To: Alan Ruttenberg <alanruttenberg@gmail.com>
- Cc: Jonathan Rees <jar@creativecommons.org>, Jeni Tennison <jeni@jenitennison.com>, "www-tag@w3.org List" <www-tag@w3.org>
On Tue, 2011-06-14 at 05:05 +0100, Alan Ruttenberg wrote: > On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 9:50 PM, David Booth <david@dbooth.org> wrote: > > I do not think that is a fair characterization. Richard's example is > > *not* opting out of machine inference. It is merely opting out of > > certain inferences that *some* applications need but others do *not* > > need. And that is as it *should* be, as it is not possible to cater to > > *all* applications. > > > > The subtle mistake that is being made repeatedly here is in assuming > > that someone's data is *wrong* (or socially irresponsible) if it > > conflates two things that we humans find useful to distinguish, such as > > people versus web pages -- *even* if the class of applications for which > > that data is intended have no need to make such a distinction! > > Pat has it right: > > On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 4:33 AM, Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us> wrote: > > Bear in mind that the very first principle of the Web is that the > > *publisher* of the data, who asserts these things about dogs or > > pictures of dogs, cannot possibly know what 'context of use' is > > going to be relevant to the *user* of the published content > > http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-lod/2011Jun/0199.html I agree with the above comment: data publishers cannot know how their data will be used. However, that is *not* the same as saying that their data must be usable in all possible applications. Any given dataset supports a particular class of applications and will be unsuitable to others. For example, a dataset that models the world as flat may be fine for computing driving directions but would be unsuitable for aircraft applications. > > David, we are not aiming for application developers to use the web as > scratchpad instead of a relational database with the mind of then > sucking it back in for their proprietary application. We don't *need* > the web for that. The idea that data publishers should have in mind > exactly how their data is supposed to be used, and then choose to use > public vocabulary however they feel like it is just broken. It is > missing the point. I agree, and that is *not* what I am advocating or condoning. Except for the rare case of community expropriation, I think URIs should be used strictly in accordance with their URI declarations (i.e., the URI owner's published definitions): http://dbooth.org/2009/lifecycle/#event2 [[ An RDF statement author has a choice about whether to use a given URI in a statement. The guiding principle is: Statement author responsibility 3: Use of a URI implies agreement with the core assertions of its URI declaration. Hence, the statement author is responsible for ensuring that he/she does indeed agree with those assertions and must NOT use the URI if he/she does not agree. ]] HOWEVER, a URI declaration or definition cannot remove all possible ambiguity, not matter how precise or well considered it is. All it can do is to *bound* the ambiguity. For *some* applications, the ambiguity will be bounded enough that the URI appears unambiguous. Whereas for other applications requiring finer distinctions, that same URI will be hopelessly ambiguous. There certainly *are* cases where people are just plain sloppy or erroneous in their data or definitions. But one should not assume that ambiguity is *necessarily* the result of sloppiness or error. And in the schema.org case, it appears to have been a conscious choice to avoid additional complexity -- complexity that may have hindered their target applications, even if it would have helped other applications. -- David Booth, Ph.D. http://dbooth.org/ Opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of his employer.
Received on Tuesday, 14 June 2011 20:42:18 UTC