I can see how the first example relates to your post. I’m not seeing (yet) how the concept “metadata” applies to the second example. It feels more like “inferential distance costs time and causes fights”.
The first example does raise interesting questions of ontology, with at least three different concepts in play (roughly “book”, “copy” and “story” with corresponding metadata categories of “bibliographic entry”, “physical characteristics” and “narrative structure”). Any particular book you read is going to leave recollections from each of these categories in your mind and it’s not so surprising that you don’t always control how much you remember from which categories. (I hear that writing a review of each book you read helps pin down some of these memories; I don’t typically do that.)
I can see how being explicit about those can be helpful. The choice of terminology might be unfortunate: “metadata” is likely to make sense primarily to people who have some training in computer programming, and that training has already made them (if they’re at all competent) more explicitly aware of these matters of ontology. So in terms of delivering useful advice the post as written might be coals to Newcastle. Maybe you could start off with something like “Programmers have a concept of metadata, i.e. information used to tag other information...” to help a more general audience bridge the gap.
For your own practical purposes, though, in the first example it sounds as if you’re being as helpful as you can and your interlocutor in contrast is being impatient—a matter of attitude rather than a matter of metadata.
I can see how the first example relates to your post. I’m not seeing (yet) how the concept “metadata” applies to the second example. It feels more like “inferential distance costs time and causes fights”.
The first example does raise interesting questions of ontology, with at least three different concepts in play (roughly “book”, “copy” and “story” with corresponding metadata categories of “bibliographic entry”, “physical characteristics” and “narrative structure”). Any particular book you read is going to leave recollections from each of these categories in your mind and it’s not so surprising that you don’t always control how much you remember from which categories. (I hear that writing a review of each book you read helps pin down some of these memories; I don’t typically do that.)
I can see how being explicit about those can be helpful. The choice of terminology might be unfortunate: “metadata” is likely to make sense primarily to people who have some training in computer programming, and that training has already made them (if they’re at all competent) more explicitly aware of these matters of ontology. So in terms of delivering useful advice the post as written might be coals to Newcastle. Maybe you could start off with something like “Programmers have a concept of metadata, i.e. information used to tag other information...” to help a more general audience bridge the gap.
For your own practical purposes, though, in the first example it sounds as if you’re being as helpful as you can and your interlocutor in contrast is being impatient—a matter of attitude rather than a matter of metadata.