<?xml encoding="utf-8"?>
<A HREF="Content042#b" NOPUSH><</A>
stupid 
     o 2.4 Mission: Impossible -- know thyself 
     o 2.5 Schemas aren\'t neutral 
     o 2.6 Metrics influence results 
     o 2.7 There\'s more than one way to describe something  
  * 3. Reliable metadata  
 
 
1. Introduction 
 
Metadata is \"data about data\" -- information like keywords, page-length, title, word-count, abstract, location, SKU, ISBN, and so on. Explicit, human-generated metadata has enjoyed recent trendiness, especially in the world of XML. A typical scenario goes like this: a number of suppliers get together and agree on a metadata standard -- a Document Type Definition or scheme -- for a given subject area, say washing machines. They agree to a common vocabulary for describing washing machines: size, capacity, energy consumption, water consumption, price. They create machine-readable databases of their inventory, which are available in whole or part to search agents and other databases, so that a consumer can enter the parameters of the washing machine he\'s seeking and query multiple sites simultaneously for an exhaustive list of the available washing machines that meet his criteria. 
 
If everyone would subscribe to such a system and create good metadata for the purposes of describing their goods, services and information, it would be a trivial matter to search the Internet for highly qualified, context-sensitive results: a fan could find all the downloadable music in a given genre, a manufacturer could efficiently discover suppliers, travelers could easily choose a hotel room for an upcoming trip. 
 
A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be a utopia. It\'s also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities. 
 
2. The problems 
 
There are at least seven insurmountable obstacles between the world as we know it and meta-utopia. I\'ll enumerate them below:. 
 
2.1 People lie 
 
Metadata exists in a competitive world. Suppliers compete to sell their goods, cranks compete to convey their crackpot theories (mea culpa), artists compete for audience. Attention-spans and wallets may not be zero-sum, but they\'re damned close. 
 
That\'s why: 
 
  * A search for any commonly referenced term at a search-engine like Altavista will often turn up at least one porn link in the first ten results. 
 
  * Your mailbox is full of spam with subject lines like \"Re: The information you requested.\" 
 
  * Publisher\'s Clearing House sends out advertisements that holler \"You may already be a winner!\" 
 
  * Press-releases have gargantuan lists of empty buzzwords attached to them.  
 
Meta-utopia is a world of reliable metadata. When poisoning the well confers benefits to the poisoners, the meta-waters get awfully toxic in short order. 
 
2.2 People are lazy 
 
You and me are engaged in the incredibly serious business of creating information. Here in the Info-Ivory-Tower, we understand the importance of creating and maintaining excellent metadata for our information. 
 
But info-civilians are remarkably cavalier about their information. Your clueless aunt sends you email with no subject line, half the pages on Geocities are called \"Please title this page\" and your boss stores all of his files on his desktop with helpful titles like \"UNTITLED.DOC.\" 
 
This laziness is bottomless. No amount of ease-of-use will end it. To understand the true depths of meta-laziness, download ten random MP3 files from Napster. Chances are, at least one will have no title, artist or track information -- this despite the fact that adding in this info merely requires clicking the \"Fetch Track Info from CDDB\" button on every MP3-ripping application. 
 
Short of breaking fingers or sending out squads of vengeful info-ninjas to add metadata to the average user\'s files, we\'re never gonna get there. 
 
2.3 People are stupid 
 
Even when there\'s a positive benefit to creating good metadata, people
<A HREF="Content044" NOPUSH>></A>