Chris Welty wrote: (01)
> I know there are many in ontolog who prefer a purely open forum, but I think
>the
> failure of SUO and the continuing nonsense in this forum - which make it the
> butt of many jokes and keeps a lot of otherwise serious ontology people away
>(I
> include myself in this category, you may argue with the "otherwise serious"
>bit)
> - are evidence that the open model doesn't work here.
>
> This forum is not taken seriously because it is too open. (02)
I beg to differ. This forum is not taken seriously, I agree, but simply
because it clearly has no goal! There is no objective. There is a lot
of discussion of sometimes interesting topics, by both the educated and
the under-educated, but there is no agreement on any path of action. If
we identified a few goals and kept the spam streams on topic toward the
goals, then anyone with interest in the goals would be a valid
contributor, however curious his/her background knowledge and opinion.
But what we get is good topics and long sequences of exchanges with no
identifiable result. (At least the wiki may capture some of the
worthwhile content in a useable form.) (03)
I have difficulty, BTW, taking several of the "semantic web" email lists
seriously for the same reasons. Those in question have a nominal goal,
but they tend to be little more than verbal wars between educated but
prejudiced camps who will never agree on an approach to the nominal
goal. And they also are the butts of various jokes, with telling
analogies to boxing, football and cricket. (04)
The question that remains for me is whether the clumsy process of
educating each other has value in itself. There are no stupid
questions. Uneducated questions teach the educated what the general
state of knowledge and confusion is, and where the limits of their
education and "common knowledge" are, and give the experts an
opportunity to justify their pride-in-knowledge by teaching. And a lot
of projects that prove to be erroneously conceived or executed can still
provide interesting ideas and object lessons to others. An aphorism
(whose origin I don't know) goes:
"You have to learn from the mistakes of others;
you won't live long enough to make them all yourself." (05)
So I think Chris's criticism is fair, but the wanted improvement is not
to close or edit the discussion. It is rather to direct it toward some
identifiable results. Peter occasionally tries to do this, but largely
without success. (06)
Of course, this is just MNSHO. An open forum provides space for many
soapboxes. Chris and I just have different ones. ;-) (07)
-Ed (08)
--
Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx
National Institute of Standards & Technology
Manufacturing Systems Integration Division
100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 (09)
"The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST,
and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." (010)
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