[rdfweb-dev] Names In FOAF

[Bob Aman]

> Another idea for names is to make the representations of names more
> complicated, e.g.:

I like this one a lot less, mainly because of how verbose it is.  And
I'm not sure it adds anything *particularly* useful either.  I
certainly don't need to add dates to names.  The tool I'm working on
right now already goes slow enough as it is.  No need to bog it down
further.

I think the way I see it is like this:  Look at the communities
springing up around "folksonomies".  There's definately a lot of
people who want this kind of functionality, but they don't want to
worry about millions of rules that determine "correctness".  I think
that applies to the software authors who have to generate and/or parse
this stuff just as much as it does to the end users who enter the
information.  I mean, when you sign up for a service, usually you
would enter your name and you're done.  What you're asking for is a
level of complexity that no end user wants to deal with.  If it can't
somehow easily be represented in a form field on a web page, it's not
worth putting in the spec.  That's why I like Ian's proposal.  It's
very user friendly.

The trend is towards entering less data and then inferring any
additional needed information from context, not exhaustively
describing everything.  (See mappr.com for example.)  Besides, it's
not like truely exhaustive descriptions are really possible anyhow.

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more
violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move
in the opposite direction."
-- 
Bob Aman