[humanmarkup] PBS-Change Requests

Hi Everyone,

As we begin our vote, I want to give my answers to Sylvia's questions in relation to a number of items in the Primary Base Schema and the overall Schema itself. She sent the concerns to me privately because she did not want to open up issues that might be wider than the narrow focus of the PBS-Change Request process I asked for in order to keep the scope of this process achievable. I thank her for that, but the questions she raises and her misgivings in general are both well-founded and deserve to be considered in the context of this vote, but apart from the specific modifications I could make in the current version before us.

I hope that doesn't confuse everyone too much, but it should become more clear as I proceed through this list. This way you will also be assured that I am leaving any concerns unheard or unaired. Please note that I am also condensing her concerns so any misstatement here is mine.

* In the complexType Haptic Sylvia questioned the sequence of elements touchedWith and touchedWhere. She offered a number of alternate constructions and values to illustrate her point, asking? "does this mean touchedSomehwere, touchedBy, etc..."

<xs:element name="toTouchWith" type="bodyLocation" default="skin?"/>
<xs:element name="toTouchHow" type="MANNERS" default="?" />

However, because this has been in the schema since the beginning and has not been questioned heretofore, I left it, reasoning that this is best hashed out after we vote.

* I changed HumlNameElement to HumanNameElement, which was aonther of hers concern, but the answer to her suggestion that there be a difference between a biological human with a name and a software agent having a name of the same type is that we can't set ourselves up to make that determination. If we created such a distinction, which could easily be misused for lack of a verification process in our specifications, we would invalidate our standard. If an entity claims a human name, it is not our responisiblity to verify or in any way be responsible for that, so we can't create a biological human-only name.

* Sylvia requested an example for a HumanGroup, but for the same reason that I took examples out of Personality, and did not take them out of Haptic, I left this alone. HumanGroup is really just a placeholder that allows for community and culture at higher levels of abstraction and complexity. It is not really anticipated to be an operational term, although a mob which happens accidentally might be considered a HumanGroup. HumanGroup does not require a reason for two or more humans to be gathered together.

* Sylvia also took exception to the simple types of Locator and Range.

Locator is like HumanGroup, a placeholder for a higher-level, more specific, and, as she expresses, likely to be imported from other sectors such as Law Enforcement, GIS, or Public Safety.

Range exists as an arbitrary measurement device to specify a value within the spectrum of values between 0 and 1 as a decimal or percentage. It is not therefore based on any logical or mathematical model. It is also the value expected for intensities, which can be subjective values.

* In attributeGroups Sylvia singled out Race as a source of misunderstanding, but as long as it is included in public categorizations, we have no choice but to include it or invalidate our work. We can't set ourselves up as arbiters of these things. If we do we only ask for trouble.

There was also some related expression that attributeGroups as strings could be changeable and therefore confusing, but I did not and do not yet understand that. Len wrote this from a position of some authority in terms of actual day-to-day database usage. I am probably just not "getting" what she meant.

All in all that was a remarkably short list.

However, in reviewing the process for voting by mail, and in that process reviewing the changes that OASIS has made in its rules and guidelines, I ran smack into a problem and it is a big one.

I am leaving the description of this problem in this post for an obvious reason and I hope you can reply to me privately while we ponder how to deal with this. The paragraphs that follow are copied from OASIS TC Guidleines:

Invited Experts

OASIS has no class of membership for an "invited expert." If the TC wishes to invite a person to participate in the TC, that person's organization should join OASIS in order to give the person eligibility to join the TC; if this is not possible then the person should join OASIS either as an Individual or an Associate member.

If the organization or person is unable or unwilling to pay the membership fee to join OASIS, the TC may petition the member section Steering Committee or the OASIS CEO to grant a fee-waived, one-year, Individual or Associate membership to the person, as described below.

Granting fee-waived OASIS memberships

OASIS recognizes that occasionally a person whose participation is extremely important to a TC may be unwilling or unable to pay for an Individual or Associate membership. In some cases it may be in the best interests of OASIS to grant the person a fee-waived membership so that he can participate in the TC.

If the TC is part of an OASIS member section, the TC should petition the member section's Steering Committee to allocate member section funds to pay for the person's OASIS membership.

For TCs not part of a member section, the TC should petition the OASIS CEO to request a fee-waived, one-year Individual or Associate membership for the person. The TC must justify to the CEO why the person is important to the TC and why the person cannot pay for his own membership. If requesting an Associate membership, the TC must also specify the reason that the person's organization is important to the TC. Blanket requests for groups of people, e.g.
inviting all members of a certain working group, are not allowed; people must be individually justified to the CEO. (Because the granting of a fee-waived membership is a decision that financially effects OASIS it can only be made by the OASIS CEO.)

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