[topicmapmail] occurrence abuse?: a thread on the topicmap mailinglist that nicely illustrates why topicmaps are too complex for use by non-experts: even they can’t seem to agree on the definition of something as fundamental as an occurrence.

But that’s ok – we don’t need topicmaps to be understood by the user. Compatible child formats like XFML can be developed for specific purposes – and UI’s should remove the last level of complexity. People will mess up metadata: they are lazy and metadata is hard to understand. That’s a given we just have to work with.