[rdfweb-dev] Proposal: UsingDublinCoreCreator

[Dan Brickley]

* Karl Dubost <karl at la-grange.net> [2003-07-24 08:40-0400]
> 
> Le mercredi, 23 juil 2003, à 21:39 America/Montreal, Masahide Kanzaki a 
> écrit :
> >>My conclusion is somewhat conservative, somewhat radical: to only use
> >>dc:creator to relate a document to a name of a creator of the 
> >>document.
> >>And to use new RDF relations (eg. foaf:maker) when we want to relate a
> >>document to an agent that created it.
> >
> >I read through wiki page and agreed with the discussion, but don't 
> >think
> >it's good to 'restrict' dc:creator to name only.
> 
> You mean physical person ?
> 
> >As Dan noted on the wiki, there are many many implementations which use
> >dc:creator as a container of Agent/People. The change of (or adding new
> >restriction on) dc:creator syntax will make so many people unhappy.
> 
> As defined in the spec:
> 
> """
> http://dublincore.org/documents/2003/03/04/dcmi-terms/#H2
> Term Name:  creator
> URI: http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/creator
> Label: Creator
> Definition: An entity primarily responsible for making the content of 
> the resource.
----------------^^^^^^

> 
> Comment: Examples of a Creator include a person, an organisation, or a 
> service.  Typically, the name of a Creator should be used to indicate 
---------------------------^^^^

(this entity versus it's name thing is the problem)

> the entity.
> 
> Type of Term: element
> Status: recommended
> Date Issued: 1999-07-02
> """
> 
> A key of the interoperability is not to redefine what others have made. 

I don't think anyone was proposing we refine dc:creator. The problem is
that Dublin Core hasn't yet come up with a way of allowing names and
other information about creators to be written down in an unambiguous
way.

I've been involved with Dublin Core since 1997, am a co-editor on two of
the DC-in-RDF specs, was briefly co-chair of the DCMI Architecture WG
and generally have spent a lot of time worrying about doing the 'right
thing' by DC. I'm sad that dc:creator is still confusing after all this
time, and that I've played a part in that mess.

> If you are not satisfied with the original property, create a new one 
> which is more complex and suit your needs.

What I've done is the opposite: created a fresh new property that is
_less_ complex than the original. Basically I think the thing to do here
is stand back from the legacy of dc:creator and get some experience with
a simpler property that does nothing at all except relate things to the 
things that made them. Most of the problem with dc:creator is mixed 
expectations. People want it to do too many things at once...


> 
> Is the problem that you can't distinguish between a human and a 
> machine? If it's that, you can add a property to qualify the nature of 
> the creator, something ala type="person".

No, the problem is that there is no clear answer to questions such as 
'what is the dc:creator of this document?', since the allowed answers
include (i) the name of the creator, and (ii) the creator him/herself.

In RDF, this is really confusing, having a single property point to 
radically different things. A person is not his/her name...



> So an agent can have created the document, now I think, the debate is 
> that you have a human who has created a document with a tool or a 
> series of tools and in this sense the property made is interesting or 
> madeby.

No, that's a side-discussion (on whether non-Person Agents can create
things). The issue / problem here is purely to do with the vague
definition of dc:creator, which allows both people and their names to
'count' as being the creator of a thing.

> 
> I have one question though. What about if your tool is not ONE tool but 
> a series of tools. You have used this and that to create, and you 
> finally finished it by hands. Would you like to keep the history of the 
> tools used to edit it?

Keeping track of workflow in that style is definitely useful, I think
modelling events in the workflow is the way to go. 
http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/discovery/harmony/docs/abc/abc_draft.html for
some old ideas on that...

cheers,

Dan