[sc34wg3] a new name for the Reference Model

[Patrick Durusau]

Tony,

Anthony B. Coates wrote:

>** Reply to message from Patrick Durusau <pdurusau@emory.edu> on Tue, 31 Dec
>2002 05:51:15 -0500
>
>>I don't dispute that the practice of piling words one upon the other is 
>>often used in an attempt to confer significance upon a work. What I 
>>would dispute is that a title can confer significance on a work that has 
>>none. (Pick your own example.) And when a work has significance, as I 
>>think the "TM Modeling Principles" does, it has no need of piling up 
>>words in the title. Particularly noise words like "Metamodel."
>>
>
>At some age before I started school, my uncle asked me what I wanted to be when
>I grow up.  I confidently replied, "A homosexual".  He smiled, because he knew
>that I had no idea what it meant, but I simply wanted to use the longest word I
>could think of.  However, I'm older now, and I really don't put long words into
>titles just for the syllabic glory.  I fully understand that any "metaXXX" word
>has a bit of a cringe factor at the moment.
>
That is a great story!

>
>>Personally I would like to see something like: TM Principles. That is 
>>partially due to my seeing principles, whether in topic map land or 
>>elsewhere, as underlying the expression of all that follows.
>>
>
>However, "TM Principles" would be a misleading title (IMHO), and this is the
>core issue that I was getting at.  When I read the document, it doesn't strike
>me as primarily laying out a set of principles for topic maps.  What it does,
>quite literally, is to describe a metamodel for representing topic map
>information in a canonical fashion.  So when I suggested "TM Canonical
>Metamodel", it wasn't (only) because I like big words, but because I thought
>the title should accurately reflect the contents to someone who hasn't actually
>read the document yet.
>
I did not mean to imply that you were deliberately inflating the title 
but I don't see "TM Canonical Metamodel" as indicating (to me at least) 
anything meaningful about the contents. I am with you through "TM" and 
possibly "Canonical" (assuming some meaningful word followed it) but I 
get lost at "Metamodel." If you mean a model of a model, is it still not 
just a model? Have I added anything meaningful by appending "meta" to 
it? That is assuming that we don't already share a common view of some 
set of particular models in a discipline and also a common view of what 
a model that encompassed all those models would consist of, then in a 
particular context "metamodel" might be a meaningful term. But that 
presumes a shared understanding of the term, which I think is lacking in 
this case.

I see the use of the "metamodel" (to use your term) as a means of 
explaining the principles of topic maps. It could be written without the 
topic map graph, if that is what you are calling the "metamodel" but 
would probably be even more difficult to understand. In other words, 
what you call the "metamodel" I see as simply as a model to aid the 
reader in understanding what is being said. (Note the editors/authors 
may disagree violently but that is my personal view.)

Patrick

-- 
Patrick Durusau
Director of Research and Development
Society of Biblical Literature
pdurusau@emory.edu