Ian,
On 7/2/2010 5:27 AM, Ian Davis wrote:
On Fri, Jul 2, 2010 at 10:19 AM, Patrick Durusau<patr...@durusau.net> wrote:
I make this point in another post this morning but is your argument that
investment by vendors =
I think I just answered it there, before reading this message. Let me
know if not!
I think you made a very good point about needing examples so user can
say: "I want to do that."
Which was one of the strong points of HTML.
I am less convinced that argues in favor of vendor position that their
investment equals how things have to be on the technical side.
Consider that when users see a large visualization of the WWW they
think, "I want to do that!", but when they see the graph code required,
they become less interested. ;-)
I am less inclined to listen to vendors and much more inclined to listen
to users.
A short story to illustrate the issue:
The Library of Congress Subject Headings, could be considered an
"ontology" of sorts, has been under construction for decades. But until
Karen Drabenstott (now Karen Marley) decided to ask the question of how
effectively do users of the LCSH fare, no one had asked the question. I
won't keep you in suspense, the results were:
Overall percentages of correct meanings for subject headings in the
original order of subdivisions were as follows: children, 32%, adults,
40%, reference 53%, and technical services librarians, 56%.
Ouch!
See "Understanding Subject Heading in Library Catalogs"
http://www-personal.si.umich.edu/~ylime/meaning/meaning.pdf
It may be that the RDF stack is everything it is reported to be, but
that does not mean that it fits the needs of users as they see them. The
only way to know that is to ask. Asking the few users that mistakenly
wander into working group meetings is probably insufficient.
Hope you are looking forward to a great weekend!
Patrick
--
Patrick Durusau
patr...@durusau.net
Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)
Another Word For It (blog): http://tm.durusau.net
Homepage: http://www.durusau.net
Twitter: patrickDurusau
