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Contributors/users in ToIP come from various backgrounds. Their culture may not be Western; . English may not be their native tongue. Yet most ToIP business will probably take place in ways that assume some of that shared context. Apart from this, ToIP community members are expected to contribute different expertise, and focus on different topic domains, e.g. technology, governance, legal, societal, etc., all of which comes with its own jargon. This makes highly precise, mutual understanding hard.They may be experts in non-technological topics that are relevant for ToIP. Working with one another presumes a setting where participants have some level of shared understanding. Often, sharing one's understanding at a superficial level suffices. Other situations require that underlying concepts are shared in a more in-depth fashion. It's like cars: peopley buying/selling cars need no in-depth shared knowledge about cars, whereas (maintenance or construction) engineers or liability lawyers need to share a deeper knowledge of how cars do (not) work.
We expect to see situations of "language confusion", i.e. in which people use words or phrases, the intension (not: intention) of which differs from the interpretation of some listeners/readers. Sometimes a casual glance at a dictionary or glossary is the solution. In other cases, deeper understanding matters, e.g. in when drafting specifications or contracts. Then we need more than a set of definitions.
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If there is community interest in "interpreting" the meaning of these Glossaries, that for me is a separate task which BTW is dependent on the establishment oof something to "interpret".
Therefore, as per originally proposed – I refer to the original proposal as a starting point for a Glossary WG: ToIP Glossary WG proposal
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to "interpret".
Therefore, as per originally proposed – I refer to the original proposal as a starting point for a Glossary WG: ToIP Glossary WG proposal
- I am convinced we continue to speak about two disparate efforts.
DanielH: My Comments
Dan Gisolfi You and I are two of the American voices that may not feel the urgency of this effort quite as intensely.
We get to throw out words (or, more difficult, metaphors) from our own culture and they often stick by the willingness of the majority to go along... I speak Spanish fairly well, but if I were trying to do highly technical work in Spanish, I'm certain I would need a specialized glossary, and I'm certain it would feel like slow going to me. My confidence would decrease. Reading and writing would take me longer, and I'd second-guess myself more. I know you get that and have proposed the glossary effort, and you'd like to keep it simple and lightweight. I get it and align with that desire. But I think it's okay to have a deeper agenda too, as long as many of us can stay surface-level and get stuff done fast. I'd feel happiest about an approach that treats English as just another language (calling English a default kind of makes me cringe; I acknowledge the denotation but don't like the connotation). I'd like what we do to be equally capable of generating a glossary in Dutch or Russian or Chinese, for example. My suggestion is to define the success criteria as follows: 1) The group's going to make one or more glossaries, and for people who don't have much more interest than that, getting stuff done in or with the group can feel like simple glossary maintenance; 2) The group's going to approach the underlying data in a way that makes localization and formal terminology work easier, as long as it doesn't get in the way of rapid progress. I think this is quite doable, and it allows the two proposals to be harmonized. If we can't harmonize them, I think both efforts will starve for attention.
Scope Statement (for the JDF Working Group Charter)
The scope of the Concepts and Terminology Working Group is to develop a corpus of shared concepts and terminology available to all stakeholders in the Trust over IP stack. This includes developing artifacts and tools for discovering, documenting, defining
Scope Statement (for the JDF Working Group Charter)
The scope of the Concepts and Terminology Working Group is to develop a corpus of shared concepts and terminology available to all stakeholders in the Trust over IP stack. This includes developing artifacts and tools for discovering, documenting, defining, and (deeply) understanding the concepts and terms used within ToIP. Key deliverables include one or more glossaries, and the corpus of data behind them. The data will consist of formally modeled concepts, plus their relations and constraints, and will encompass perspectives from technical, governance, business, legal and other realms.
DanielH note:
The copy editor in me may have gotten carried away a bit by the simple paragraph I wrote just above. (I'm a novelist by hobby, and "less is more" has been drilled into me by professional editors at publishing houses.) Rieks' original paragraph contained more detail than what remains in my version. I tried to stay true to its intent while simplifying as much as I could. I'm preserving the longer form below for comparison, in case we need to add something that I cut too much, or in case we want to go back to that version and start over. Original version: The mission of the proposed C&T WG is to foster efficient and effective cooperation between ToIP members that each have their own backgrounds (socially, linguistically, expertise, etc.), by creating and maintaining artifacts and tools for specifying, documenting, learning, and (deeply) understanding the concepts and associated terms that are used within ToIP, and to eliminate terminological confusion where possible. The scope of the WG is the creation and maintenance of a corpus of terms and concepts, from which some basic artefacts will be generated and additional ones as the need arises. Other WG activities will include the creation of conceptual (mental) models, that see on the formal specification of concepts, their relations and constraints, such that they can serve as a solid (mental) basis for dealing with issues in the . Key deliverables include one or more glossaries, and the corpus of data behind them. The data will consist of formally modeled concepts, plus their relations and constraints, and will encompass perspectives from technical, governance, business, legal and other realms. This WG may also organise Task Forces for specialized activities if deemed appropriate by the majority of the WG members and in line with the overall mission of the ToIP Foundation.
Drummond note (2020-06-12):
I made minor wordsmithing changes to the Scope Statement.
Conveners (add your name if you are interested to become one of the conveners)
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