[topicmapmail] Subject Identifiers metadata

[Kal Ahmed]

Dan Corwin wrote:

> * Kal Ahmed:
>
>>>> I was talking about the thing that we conceptually use to represent a
>>>> subject - irrespective of its representation in some computer system.
>>>
>
> * Dan Corwin:
>
>>> If there truly were no such subject, Kal, then how can you discuss it
>>> so easily with us in both of your paragraphs above?
>>
>
> * Kal Ahmed:
>
>> What could you possibly want to say about it?
>
> ...
>
>> I can't see what you can possibly say about the "thing that we hang
>> assertions off of" - its essentially a non-entity that comes into being
>> only when we make an assertion about a subject.
>>
>> There may be some philosophical point to wanting to do this, but its not
>> within the reach of my developer-brain ;-)
>
>
> Already asked and answered once.  If I can clarify any of the half dozen
> specific, non-philosophical examples I gave, please let me know which:
>
>   http://www.infoloom.com/pipermail/topicmapmail/2004q2/005986.html 

I reread that posting and I think I get it now - thanks for putting it 
into Java-speak for me. If nothing else, this proves that it is about 
time I started using another programming language again - I have gone 
native :-)

I agree that we need a best practice method of talking about a topic as 
a collection of characteristics, but that (in my mind) is different from 
talking about the thing that we hang those 
characteristics/assertions/associations off of, which is where we were 
talking past one another.

When you say you would like allow users of a collaborative system to 
rate or talk about a "topic" you say specifically: "not to model the 
subject of the topic, but how well it was built." which to me means you 
want to talk about the collection of characteristics, not the subject of 
the topic and not the topic-as-subject-proxy (without any characteristics).

Implementation-wise talking about topics (as collections of 
characteristics) probably is as simple as using a well-known 
name/occurrence whose value is the source locator of the topic being 
discussed.

<programmer-mode setting="on">
Perhaps TopicMaps 2.0 needs to have cleaner reification of topics as one 
of its design goals.
</programmer-mode> ;-)

Cheers,

Kal