[rdfweb-dev] Proposal: Names in FoaF

[Morten Frederiksen]

On Sunday 20 April 2003 16:50, Bill Kearney wrote:
> I disagree on the elimination of naming entirely from foaf.  Really, what
> are the real numbers behind applications/users needing to express the data
> in ways that 'western style' appelations won't handle?  Is this a case of
> being 'too perfect' such that it wrecks the larger value?
It is a minority of the world's population that has names that can be put 
into the "western style" naming conventions (even though, unfortunately, the 
"online population" may currently be skewed in favour of western people).

> I'd certainly support expressing that the name conventions are intended as
> those expressed in a western context.  Should another context be needed
> this is where Jim's suggestion of having a 'better' vocabulary is a good
> idea.
I have no problems with a naming vocabulary separate from FoaF, leaving foaf 
with a "display name" (and an IRC nick) - perhaps it's not to soon to try 
that approach, but I don't think it should stay the way it is, with western 
style properties in the FoaF vocabulary.

> Make no mistake, I'm not in favor of forcing western style naming
> conventions, I'm simply suggesting that since the staggering majority of
> uses for this will USE that style that it's sort of silly to worry about
> it.
But it does sound like you want to force everyone into the western style?

A similar argument could be made for language tagging and encoding of 
documents (e.g. RSS), after all, most are in english anyway...


Regards,
Morten