[xtm-wg] Re: Relativistic views [Re: XTM syntax issues]

[Robert Barta <rho@bigpond.net.au>]

> rho@bigpond.net.au wrote :
> "... we could eventually drop the concept of a 'topic' as a whole.
> This would let us live in a highly _relativistic_ world in which
> there is nothing like "the tree in my garden" but only "what most
> people see as tree in my garden", "what some birds may do with that
> tree in my garden", "what the gardener sees in that tree" ...

Bernard Vatant wrote:
...
> And from a technical and communication viewpoint, it seems more simple to
> keep the tree as a topic, and then add "gardening" or "birdies" scopes,
...

> Don't forget Topic Maps will have hopefully all sorts of human users. For
> most of them, ask to give away what they consider as common sense to begin
> with, and they'll fly away ... As pointed before, we're not in an academic
> exercise, but trying to build effective tools.

Last trimester I had a small "field-test" of topic map authoring with my
students, some of them IT youngsters, some being non-IT post-graduates.

While the standard was in quite some flux at that time, results were not
too bad, but most maps concentrated on the topics, neglecting the "real
flesy"
associations. So I ended up with more a bookmark list than a TM. My
conclusion
from this is that these students were led astray a bit by the existence
of
'topic's alone.

I agree that - in the beginning - the 'acceptance costs' are lower with
topics
being a first class concept, but I also know that there is nothing like
a free 
lunch. And if we would like to employ TMs on a large scale, I would
assume (my 
gutt feeling) that this could become a TM management issue. Time will
tell...

\rho

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