Re: reference: a challenge for skos

* Miles, AJ (Alistair)  <A.J.Miles@rl.ac.uk> [2004-08-10 16:47+0100]
> 
> I came across this just now ...
> 
> http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000589.html
> 
> ... interesting.

Thanks for this. I'm inclined to agree with his conclusion, which is
that we're not trying to solve the same problem. I wonder if we should
say something like this in the Web somewhere? eg.: SKOS represents 
thesaurus-like data structures in an explicit and extensible format. 
While these structures might be useful resources for researchers  
engaged in automatic classification, parsing/interpreting 
unstructured text, Natural Language Processing, etc., SKOS is not 
expected to solve the difficult problems associated with mapping from a 
stream of characters to a structure which normalises them into
references to uniquely identified 'concepts'. Machine interpretation of 
human-generated text is related to the general problems of artificial
intelligence (eg. common sense reasoning, background knowledge, etc),
ie. a known 'very hard problem'. SKOS attempts to address an easier
problem space: data sharing amongst thesaurus-based applications. It
does not make any grand claims regarding the utility of home-grown or 
specialist-maintained thesauri in everyday and scientific life, beyond
noting that they are widely used and that the lack of a modern,
Web-friendly data model and syntax has hampered the exchange and mapping
of thesaurus datasets, and their use in Web applications.

Bit wordy, maybe?
 
Dan

> Short extract:
> 
> ... the authors of SKOS are trying to solve a different problem, namely how
> to let people who are putting explicit semantics in their web documents do
> so in a way that allows for variable concept labels and partly-related
> alternative conceptual schemata. Fine -- but some people may think that this
> will help to represent the content of the ordinary-language documents that
> ordinary folk write, especially when the documents are scientific or
> technical in character. But it won't. 
> 
> 
> ---
> Alistair Miles
> Research Associate
> CCLRC - Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
> Building R1 Room 1.60
> Fermi Avenue
> Chilton
> Didcot
> Oxfordshire OX11 0QX
> United Kingdom
> Email:        a.j.miles@rl.ac.uk
> Tel: +44 (0)1235 445440
> 
>

Received on Tuesday, 10 August 2004 17:56:51 UTC