[Ag Meinungsfindungstool] Common business entity model

[Michael Allan <mike AT zelea.com>]

Marc said:
> To be honest you don't need to be a member of our working group -
> even not of Pirate Party - when you want to cooperate with us. It's
> all about coming together and working on the right things.

Thank you, I'd like that. :-)  I've been hopeful ever since I listened
to the transcript of the first meeting, especially where Oliver
describes the group and it's raison d'être.

> Here is a first draft of our idea of a Common Business Entity Model
> (where 'Business' means it's not a 'Data' Entity Relationship Model
> assignable to a database schema, it's just objects found in the real
> world - the database schema might look totally different):
> http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/wiki/images/4/45/DSFS-BusinessEntityModel.jpg

I have some questions about the model.  To keep them separate from my
other questions, I opened this thread.

(a) Why is discussion itself not modeled?  It's crucial of course, but
I don't see it anywhere.

(b) Why is a vote included as an actual (real world) entity?  Myself,
I think of voting as a formality of the system, something new we
introduce.  It does have *correlates* in the real world, but people
don't actually go about casting votes in order to form their opinions,
not yet.  (In fact, most of the right side seems to be modeling a
artificial system yet to be deployed, not the real world.  I probably
mistook your meaning for "business entity".)

Looking at the left side, I see a few possible errors:

(c) An opinion is not really (in itself) a document.  A document can
be involved in the formalization and expression of an opinion, but the
opinion is not bound to that form.

(d) Likewise, a point of view is not an opinion (at least not in
English).  It is one's outlook from a personal situation.  It may
influence opinion in peculiar ways, but is not an opinion in itself.

(e) Group membership is not a closed composite relation, but rather an
open aggregate.  One can be a member of many groups.

Although I don't have a full understanding yet, I suspect it will be
difficult to find the right model to code by.  It may take a while.
Later (in the other thread), I'll try to suggest a way of buying time
and (possibly) evolving some of the models by discovery.

-- 
Michael Allan

Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
http://zelea.com/


marc said:
> Hi Michael,
> 
> There is always time, when people doing the right things together ;o)
> 
> So you wrote
> >Although I'm not a member of the Meinungsfindungstool working group, I
> >have a personal concern with what you're working on.  Specifically it
> >involves the problem of "split consensus" as Thomas von der Elbe has
> >called it, or "split opinion formation" in your own terms.
> 
> To be honest you don't need to be a member of our working group - even not
> of Pirate Party - when you want to cooperate with us. It's all about coming
> together and working on the right things.
> 
> >But first I have some questions.  Do you have time to answer?
> 
> Sure, you are welcome.
> 
> >Marc said, October 10:
> >> One possible answer our working groups comes out with is, that we need to
> >> define kind of standardization. Like the W3C standardizes the internet
> >> and
> >> Business Entity Model...
> 
> >And in reply to Pietro, October 16:
> >> The idea is to have a common base (framework of workflows and
> >> entities) for all tools to enable the interaction and extensibility
> >> of the overal process of decision-making. Therefore we need a common
> >> understanding of how workflows and entities interacts in the
> >> process.
> 
> >I try to picture what you describe (pardon my ASCII):
> 
> Sorry, I can't cite your ascii ;o)
> 
> >Here T1 and T2 are competing tools for the purpose of opinion forming.
> >A user may choose T1 or T2.  But regardless of the choice (say it is
> >T2), the user will remain part of the same overall opinion forming
> >process (M).  So he/she may continue to work with other users who make
> >different choices (T1).  This technical freedom of choice is made
> >possible by the common standards, practices and/or databases (S) that
> >are shared between the competing tools.  Is this picture correct?
> 
> Yes, that's what our working group tries to establish.
> 
> And even more, if the user starts with T1 and then recognizes that T2 fits 
> better to his needs, than he can just switch over to T2, if T2 provides a 
> migration path to the Common Business Entity Model (CBEM) ;o)
> 
> Here is a first draft of our idea of a Common Business Entity Model (where 
> 'Business' means it's not a 'Data' Entity Relationship Model assignable to 
> a 
> database schema, it's just objects found in the real world - the database 
> schema might look totally different):
> http://wiki.piratenpartei.de/wiki/images/4/45/DSFS-BusinessEntityModel.jpg
> 
> Unfortunately it's not fully translated yet, but I hope you understand our 
> intention. The blue rectangles are objects that are part of the base 
> framework standard. The red ones are specific to plug-ins, using the blue 
> ones to inherit from, or just defining new ones.
> 
> At the end the blue ones are those who all tools should be able to convert 
> their own Model into. That's the way the different tools can interchange 
> their data.
> 
> Does this make sense?
> 
> Cheers
> Marc