Re: What information is lost at capture-time?
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 11:35:23 +0200
Message-ID: <4086405e$0$15375$e4fe514c_at_news.xs4all.nl>
Dawn M. Wolthuis wrote:
> mAsterdam wrote:
>>What information is lost at capture-time?
>>
>>1. reference to information not already available.
>
> Including information from all senses
To me it seems like you have some assumption on the way information is captured (capture mechanism), see below.
What do you mean?
>>2. information that doesn't fit the existing structure.
>>
>>Number 1 needs additional reference information,
>>2 needs a change of model.
>>Both may be to cumbersome.
>>
>>3. information contradicting information already available.
>>
>>4. loss due to mistakes, sometimes caused by (4a) interface inadequacies.
>>
>>5. loss due to "minimal input to get the job done"
>>(not caring about the shared data).
Second thougt: It is fair to warn, that I do *not* assume here that the ultimate goal of the actor providing the information is to do just that (providing the information). So an "import" or "load" for maintaing the database does not suffer from this loss. My assumption here is (I used it earlier, in the thread on "multiple specification of constraints") that the actor providing the information provides the information as a side effect of trying to achieve a goal which is - at least partly - *outside* the scope of the database.
> 6. Information that is "lost in translation" > The person (or service) updating the data understands it, but cues that > might help someone interpret the data are missing. This might be a > combination of a couple of the others, but seemed worthy of another bullet.
Agreed. It is premature yet to aim for independence of the factors. Maybe a clever reformulation could distill some basics and reduce the number of bullets. Later.
BTW: The "person (or service)" - let's say "actor". Any objections?
> 7. Loss due to inaccurate or misleading metadata > The information might be added correctly but when passed along in the form > of a report, the information describing the data could be misleading (even > to the extent that the untagged data is fine, but the described/tagged data > would appear wrong).
Would "unforeseen context" describe what you mean here?
> ...Great list. What do you plan to do with it? --dawn
Heh. That was the toughest of your remarks. Seriously trying to answer it made me take this long to reply.
I don't know. It just occurred to me and I felt that this topic is relevant to this group. "Perfect information", "perfect knowledge of information needs" and "confluence of goals" seem to slip in as implicit assumptions way to often.
The lack of other contributions suggests I may have been wrong on the relevance, though. Received on Wed Apr 21 2004 - 11:35:23 CEST