The Metadata Continuum by Jim Harris.
Deeply interesting post on metadata and the failure of the single language approach.
Harris quotes Peter Benson as saying:
“The Babel approach of a single language to unite them all,” Benson continued, “has a very poor track history and there is good reason for this. Language is more about power and authority than it is about true communication. We have tried to come up with a solution that is solely focused on achieving unambiguous communication. It really does not matter what it is called as long as we agree on what it is. We do this by using terminology to define concepts and then assigning concept identifiers that are used as metadata. The separation of the terminology from the concept identifier, or rather linking terminology through a concept identifier, allows everyone to remain comfortably in their own space yet communicate with others.”
Harris continues:
So it would appear that we face a daunting challenge, which we could call the Metadata Continuum, where at one end we have the uniformity of controlled vocabularies, and at the other end we have the flexibility of chaotic folksonomies. The daily business operations of most organizations are governed by a metadata strategy that falls somewhere in between, which begs the question: In which direction should the best practices of metadata management flow—toward flexibility or toward uniformity?
The question of multiple “controlled vocabularies” or “chaotic folksonomies,” all meaning the same thing, doesn’t seem to have come up.
And I would replace Harris’s closing question:
Where along the Metadata Continuum is your organization?
with:
Where along the Metadata Continuum does your organization need to be?
Or perhaps better:
Where along the Metadata Continuum does your organization need to be for particular activities?
It maybe that there are substantial savings for a small group of organizations to agree on a uniform vocabulary for some purposes but remain diverse in other areas. Or for an organization to create mappings of vocabularies for news reports on raw materials and supplies. And to tolerate a lot of semantic noise in other areas. Depends on the anticipated semantic ROI.
Seems like that is a question that goes unanswered, even by the MDM (master data management) crowd. Oh, a lot of hand waving about the general case but I can’t write the general case savings on a deposit slip and take it to the bank. I need to know what my savings/ROI from MDM, Semantic Web, Topic Maps, etc., are going to be for my company.
Not an easy question to answer but I think customers deserve our best efforts at giving them a testable answer to such questions.