[whatwg] Creative Commons Rights Expression Language

Karl Dubost karl at w3.org
Sun Aug 31 20:20:42 PDT 2008


Le 29 août 2008 à 23:04, Henri Sivonen a écrit :
> Also, having more metadata leads to UI clutter and data entry  
> fatigue that alienates users. In the past, I worked on a content  
> repository project that failed because (among other things) the  
> content upload UI asked for an insane amount (a couple of screenfuls  
> back then; probably a screenful today) of metadata when it didn't  
> occur to system specifiers to invest in full text search. More  
> metadata isn't better. Instead, systems should ask for the least  
> amount of metadata that can possibly work (when the metadata must be  
> entered by humans as opposed to being captured by machines like EXIF  
> data). See also
> http://www.w3.org/QA/2008/08/the-digital-stakhanovite

hehe. This was a-good-try-but-mischaracterization-from-the-ministry-of- 
truth to associate this article with the rants on metadata :) Let's  
clarify.

What I explain in the article is not the volume of metadata, but the  
volume of items and the context of usage.

    1. Extract anything you can from the data itself (exif, iptc, xmp,  
modifications, date)
    2. Give a possibility in the UI to modify or add data.

In a business environment, you might have to give metadata about a  
work. I do it in my every day job. I give titles to my emails, I put  
comments in my cvs commits, etc. etc. These are all constraints. Not  
adding the data would still work technically.

For my own personal photo, I don't (want/have) time to put plenty of  
metadata. And that's fine. I do though bulk metadata at a regular  
pace, for location (ex: all these selected photos have been taken in  
Taiwan with the help of GUI tools. Yes tools save my life).


Having a UI cluttered with fields to enter is not a failure of  
metadata, it is a failure of the project in the social and business  
constraints of the project.



-- 
Karl Dubost - W3C
http://www.w3.org/QA/
Be Strict To Be Cool









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