RDFWeb and Friend of a Friend (FOAF): Why FOAF has foaf:knows rather than foaf:friend...

August 04, 2003

Why FOAF has foaf:knows rather than foaf:friend...

In brief, foaf:knows was designed to be relatively harmless. It's use (and non-use) should be inoffensive. We dropped foaf:friend and foaf:knowsWell a year or two ago as they proved undeployably awkward, both when used and more interestingly, when not used.

Posted by danbri at August 4, 2003 01:23 AM

Comments

Oopsie, as Dave pointed out in #foaf (http://ilrt.org/discovery/chatlogs/foaf/2003-08-04#T10-06-11) I originally wrote 'we dropped foaf:knows' when I meant to write 'we dropped foaf:friend'. I've edited the article directly, but leaving a papertrail here just in case Mark Pilgrim's blog-diff gadget is watching. FWIW I often make a few tweaks to articles here within the first minute or hour of posting, rarely change things after that. If I'm writing something that is likely to be volatile, it goes in the wiki (http://rdfweb.org/topic/FoafProject) instead.

Posted by: Dan Brickley on August 4, 2003 11:08 AM

Is there any notes on what the difficulties caused were? You can't drop in a line like "and more interestingly, when not used." and not give a link to the more intrestingly bit! :-)

Posted by: Ben Meadowcroft on August 4, 2003 12:55 PM

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Posted by: Mark on August 4, 2003 02:53 PM

Ben, the basic issue was w.r.t. expected reciprocation. Because the concepts of 'knowing', 'knowing well', 'friend' etc. are both slippery and because people vary (personality, use of language etc.) in how they're comfortable using those concepts, you get into situations such as X's foaf file says that X has friends Y, and Z whereas Y's foaf says X is 'just' a knows or knowsWell (knowsWell being particularly awkward as it suggests significant familiarity without affection, ie. no "would like to know better" wiggleroom). Z's foaf might list neither as friends, and risk being taken (despite ommission not implying negation in RDF or FOAF) as suggesting that Z doesn't consider either X or Y to be friends. Although Z might protest that the absence of a claim from a FOAF file is consistent with it still being true, X and Y could fairly counter-protest that Z could have made the effort to mention them since they made the effort to mention him/her. And so on...

You see similar economies of expected reciprocation in closed-world systems like Friendster or LinkedIn, especially where they offer endorsement and commenting facilities. Not something to blunder into with FOAF without some careful thought, so we retreated to the safer ground of 'foaf:knows'.

Posted by: Dan Brickley on August 4, 2003 04:43 PM

There's still a lack of clarity about how well you need to know someone to foaf:know them.

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