Meeting Minutes : 2003-02-06 : IRC meeting

Redaction: Suellen Stringer-Hye, from IRC logs
Review and Publication: Bernard Vatant
Release: 2003-02-17.

Attendance
- Voting members: Bernard Vatant, Lars Marius Garshol, Peter Flynn, Mary Nishikawa,
Suellen Stringer-Hye, Vivian Bliss, Thomas Bandholtz, Michael Priestley
- Prospective members: Eric Freese, Motomu Naito

Excused: Jim Mason, Steve Pepper

Absent: Jim Mason, Steve Pepper, Holger Rath, Eamonn Neylon, Patrick Durusau, Don Smith

Invited Guest: Geir Ove Grønmo

1. Agenda

Review of document "A Gentle Introduction to Published Subjects", drafted by Steve Pepper

http://www.ontopia.net/tmp/pubsubj-gentle-intro.htm

2. Discussion of document

Section 2-1

Proposals:

1. The word gravitation should be changed to gravity
   
2. Change line "Other formalisms may use other names; for example, RDF uses the term "resource" for what amounts to the same thing" to something like "Other formalisms may use other names". Do not include direct reference to RDF. Somehow express the fact that the topic is an "electronic symbol" for the subject.
   
3. Classes are designed by singular nouns: change "famous scientists" to "famous scientist"

Decisions:

1. Change to gravity (more usual)
   
2. Come up with wording via email.
   
3. No decision made. Much debate about natural language consistency versus programming language consistency and whether, for precision, these two need to match. Agreed to take discussion to lists.

Section 2-3

Proposals:

1. "Subject Identity" should be replaced by "Subject Identification" in the statement "discovering which subject is represented by a topic is the process of subject identification" and throughout the document for consistency, since "establishing subject identity" means "subject identification".
   
2. Take off-line two issues : "fragment identifiers" and "canonical resource"

Decisions:

1. Agreed
   
2. Agreed

Section 2-3.1

Proposals:

1. Change "network-retrievable information resource" to "information resource" since "resource" by definition means network retrievable.

Decisions:

1. Much debate about definitions of "resource" (SAM, W3C, ISO13250), which to use, and stability of definition of in ISO 13250. Decision deferred until next meeting. All TC members agreed to review SAM in the meantime.

Meeting ended at that point after 1h30 of debate, many members having to quit.
Decision to continue the discussion on next meeting, and to provide feedback to the document editor (Steve Pepper)

3. Next meeting

Next IRC meeting scheduled February 21th, 22:00 UTC
Time chosen to be more gentle to Japanese and Californian members

Agenda : continued discussion of "Gentle Introduction"