RE: reference: a challenge for skos

> 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?

Sounds pretty darn good to me.  

I did set up a wiki page for a SKOS FAQ
<http://esw.w3.org/topic/SkosDev/SkosFaq> a while back - I keep meaning to
put in some work on that - this would be a good thing to put there, although
we'd have to work out exactly what question it's answering :)

Al.


> 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 Wednesday, 11 August 2004 15:32:18 UTC