During the course of writing last week’s post, I found this:
Metacrap: Putting the torch to seven straw-men of the meta-utopia
This post does a great job of describing the common problems inherent in delivering valuable metadata – as summarized below
The post was written in 2001 and referred to web site metadata.
Yet in many cases these same challenges are inherent in any metadata project. What examples can you come up with for each of these in your business?
Gary
Here are the solutions to your seven straw men. First, a couple of caveats:
The internet is out of bounds for now. These seven only apply to the enterprise – a big enough challenge in its own right. Next, metadata is only one form, or I should say Function of a string of Data. All the other functions, like master data, reference data, transaction data, structured data and unstructured data are covered under this rubric. Finally, forget about technology: this is, as correctly point out by the author, a cultural thing.
2.1 People lie – Solution: Don’t ask them to tell the truth. Give them instead guidelines that show them that lies will be tolerated but not connected perpetuated.
2.2 People are lazy – Solution: Don’t ask them to do anything. If they do nothing, they don’t get paid.
2.3 People are stupid – Solution: Make it possible to connect any kind of stupid (misspellings, abbreviations, acronyms, etc.) to a standard spelling.
2.4 Mission: Impossible — know thyself – Solution: Say what’s true for you and let the wisdom of the crowd validate. Or not.
2.5 Schemas aren’t neutral – Solution: – Don’t use a schema until you’ve figured out the language first.
2.6 Metrics influence results – Solution: – Don’t use hierarchies until you’ve figured out the language first. As the author points out, if you have to pick just one everyone else is miserable.
2.7 There’s more than one way to describe something – Solution: Yes, there is. Thanks goodness.
John – lovely insights. Thank you for sharing 🙂