Gadgetopia

That "out in left field" sounds like someone who's read a whitepaper but hasn't actually ever tried to make use of semantic/ontology concepts.

Have you seen Tog (www.toghq.com)? It's an attempt to make a bunch of plugins for Rails to quickly and easily give your site "Social Web" stuff. Looks pretty good, though a bit early. Interestingly, for the current discussion, is that they have a CMS plugin!

Considering a CMS is system would suggest that no one feature if more important than another, wouldn't it? Though there definitely is some fluff in a CMS that we could all live without if we have to.

I would say in many ways that it is more important for those backing the CMS application to be aware that a CMS is more than software. A CMS is an information system which has to reflect a person, business, or organization's business processes and workflow when it comes to content management. That's a very complex system and why we all still struggle looking for the perfect CMS.

Sure a a good ontology is crucial to the underlying structure of the system, but so long as it's good most users won't care about that. That begs another question though, from whose perspective?

End users want transparency when adding information to or accessing information from the repository. IT wants ease of administration and the ability to cross systems. Compliance wants a way to clearly determine document lifecycles. Legal wants to be able to find content minutiae, the needle in the haystack. in an enterprise content management system that touches so many areas of the organization, what's important really depends on your job and how you interact with the system.

Ron Miller Editor Fierce Content Management Newsletter http://www.fiercecontentmanagement.com/