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Shelley Powers wrote:
> If you don't understand it, and don't want to take the time to understand
> it, or don't feel it will buy you anything, or hate the acronym, or you're
> in a general bitchy mood that's easily triggered if someone uses "Semantic"
> in the same sentence that contains "Web", the solution is simple: don't use
> it. Don't use it. Don't study it, look at it, listen about it, work with it,
> sleep with it, or generally go out and dance late at night with it.
I think that's exactly what people are doing. No argument there.
On the other hand, many people on this list have studied RDF, and
are using it, or perhaps have rejected it.
What I hear on this list is great frustration with RDF. If RDF is
actually as simple and straightforward as RDF proponents claim - if
this is the case, why do we need six specifications to describe it?
These are not simple documents.
> Is it fashionable to be _down_ on RDF?
No, it's not fashionable, it's entirely appropriate. RDF has real
problems. We should be thankful it's adoption has been limited over
the last five years - there is still a chance to get it into shape.
[I would love to have seen Namespaces and WXS adopted at the same
rate as RDF.]
> And the reason I can do this so easily is there's a group of people who gave
> up a lot of their time and energy to work on six -- six -- documents for the
> RDF specification. And they're joined by a lot of other people who gave up
> enormous amounts of their time and energy to develop tools and APIs to work
> with these same specifications.
Instead of coming here to praise the volume of output, did you stop
to wonder how the wg got from two to six specifications under what
has been called a bug-fixing charter?
> I thought it might be nice for the RDF critics to be reminded of the
> personal work and effort that has gone into this specification, this RDF
> that generates so much passion. Perhaps you might spare a moment or to
> consider that you might, just might, not be able to do better at a meta-data
> strategy yourselves if given the opportunity.
I'm not sure what your point is, but for a period my time and energy
was thrown into the RDF working group. Fwiw, my opinion, then and
now, is that the RDF charter is a millstone around the working
group's neck. And two years from now, when we are on this list
bitching about RDF (rest assured, we will be), rationales based on
the constraints of a charter are going to sound very weak-
arguments ad misericordiam won't cut it.
Bill de hÓra
--
Propylon
www.propylon.com
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