Re: RE : aboutness and broader

so many appear to be obsessed with defining concepts that are by  
general agreement elusive.

is the hippopotamus in this room an animal?
well it is, but we might be hard put to prove it....

cheers

~:"


Jonathan Chetwynd

j.chetwynd@btinternet.com
http://www.openicon.org/

+44 (0) 20 7978 1764


On 6 Jun 2008, at 16:06, Simon Spero wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 6, 2008 at 10:20 AM, Leonard Will <L.Will@willpowerinfo.co.uk 
> > wrote:
>
> True, which is why the document should be indexed with the most  
> specific term.
>
> [...]. The search system should be able to distinguish between  
> searches for items indexed with the term "animals" and searches for  
> items indexed by the term "animals" or any of its narrower terms.  
> This is a function of the search system, though, and does not  
> require any special provision in the thesaurus structure.
>
> The indexing term "animals" would be assigned to documents which  
> either
>
> a. Deal with animals in general
> b. Deal with several types of animal, too many to index individually
> c. Deal with a type of animal for which no more specific term exists  
> in the thesaurus.
>
> The only requirement placed on the syndetic  structure is support  
> for  hierarchical relationships between terms such that  the  
> narrower term is a proper subset of the broader one;  otherwise  
> upward posting  and the rule of three (for suitable values of  
> three)  don't work, and the use of specific terms will cause recall  
> to drop.  Unfortunately, SKOS as it now stands doesn't support this  
> kind of relationship.
>
> Simon
>
>