The issues are too important, the technology too complex, to leave such thinking to others alone. Managers, marketers, politicians have a role, but not the role of XML developers. The conversation should include technically savvy specialists in fields like ethics, philosophy, and law. Those who think very deeply about schemas and about the Semantic Web must consider how competing interests and contestedness matter to the creation and use of schemas. There are irreconcilable interests and strongly contested concepts central to both the political traditions of Western democratic societies and to schemas already made, being made, or planned.
Privacy is one such concept.
Economic development, censorship and content labeling, informed civic participation, education, natural resource usage, financial information, the relation of doctor and patient are others. Schema-makers need to come to theoretical and practical terms with the likelihood of there never being widespread agreement among the relevant parties about the contested meanings and competing interests of these and other aspects of public, common life. Part of coming to terms with this likelihood is theorizing about the treatment and adjudication of competing schemas, including those which may be in principle irreconcilable and those that may not be. Such work is hard for human beings. No one seriously claims that machines will ever do this work for us.