Re: defaults

I agree - I do not think we are at the point where we should say
"we have failed if we do not put in defaults"  thus would agree that
defaults is
in the goal classification.

if we had as classified non-monotonicity at the breakout meeting with this
kind of discussion, in my opinion, we would have put it in the
"open issues" category - a place for discussion because the topic is very
important but a topic for which consensus has not been reached.

Deborah


Jeff Heflin wrote:

> > It would be really nice to start in that direction by
> > putting defaults in the "goal, but not requirement" section
> > of our requirements/use-cases document, citing the implementation
> > challenges Peter et. al. have pointed out on the one hand,
> > and the use cases Guus et. al. have pointed out on the other.
>
> Considering the current level of disagreement among group members, I
> would support putting defaults as a goal but not a requirement.
>
> > Hmm... I wonder if we have an un-stated requirement for
> > monotonic reasoning? I know monotonicity is a requirement,
> > for scalability, in my view. I'd like to see that
> > discussed in the design goals, if not listed as a specific
> > requirement. (In order to make it a specific requirement,
> > I should provide a compelling use case that depends
> > on it. I hope to do so, but I'm not confident I'll  find
> > time, nor am I confident that we'll want to devote
> > much space in our document
> > to that sort of thing; I hope it's sufficiently
> > clear to folks after a brief design-goal level discussion).
> >
> > JeffH and requirements editors, please let me know what
> > you think of this suggestion.
>
> I don't know if there is enough of a group consensus to make monotonic
> reasoning a requirement. A number of individuals (Pat Hayes, Peter
> Patel-Schneider, etc.) have made extremely strong cases why it should
> be, but I think those who support defaults and similar techniques are by
> definition against it. Thus, I think the issue should be discussed
> further before we decide how to treat it in the Requirements document
> (note this is my personal opinion, and does not necessarily represent
> the opinions of the other editors).
>
> Jeff Heflin
> Lehigh University

--
 Deborah L. McGuinness
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Received on Wednesday, 23 January 2002 12:17:48 UTC