[Sigia-l] Findability; the crux of it?

[Karl Fast]

What is the crux of this dispute?

I confess to having ignored most of this thread. I don't have the
emotional energy to expend on it (not this week, lord knows). But my
intellectual side is, finally and mercifully, returning to a
reasonable strength and so....

I will venture a question:

   Is the central issue in this dispute rooted in differing
   interpretations and definitions of the findability concept?

Proponents of findability seem to, in my limited reading, think it a
useful concept. Not necessarily a hard, firm rigorously defined
thing, but a useful label that articulates a pervasive trouble spot
that is inadequately described by other terms.

Opponents of findability seem to--again, in my *limited* reading of
this debate--believe that the concept has serious philosophical
shortcomings. To embrace it, with these shortcomings, would
therefore be a disaster for IA and we would all lose. Accepting this
suspect concept would chew away at the rigorous philosophical and
intellectual foundation we are attempting to construct, however
haphazardly, in our nascent field.


Is that the crux of it? Not the details of course, but the crux?




--karl