Re: FOAF spec revised - addtion of foaf:focus, a skos extension linking topical and factual information

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 7:00 PM, Bernard Vatant
<bernard.vatant@mondeca.com> wrote:
> Welcome Antoine to the brainstorming
>
> Since the box is open, it's open :)

:)

> I like standsFor, but my latin culture would prefer a latin term, so why not
> "represents" or even simply "presents" [1]
> Well, I know, I will have the same remarks as for "referent" or "refersTo"

Thanks for saving me some typing ;)

> But I'm waiting for real good arguments against it. A concept is really a
> way for a thing to be made pręsens, in the various meanings of the word such
> as "really there" and "efficient".

RDF and OWL are themselves a representational system, as is [at
another level] the Web itself. To use such a generic term, risks
constant confusion.

Another option discussed btw was 'about'; however both RDF/XML and
RDFa syntax use that already

> See http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=praesens&la=la#lexicon
> ... or for not-so-young frenchies remembering their humanities years, the
> good old Gaffiot I just discovered on-line.
> http://www.lexilogos.com/latin/gaffiot.php?p=1225

I'll have a read!

Dan

> Bernard
>
> [1] Since no presentation is really new, any presentation is a
> representation (and vice-versa) See
> http://blog.hubjects.com/2009/11/representation-as-translation.html
>
>
>
> 2010/8/10 Antoine Isaac <aisaac@few.vu.nl>
>>
>> Hi Dan,
>>
>> I think I buy all the naming arguments below.
>> But since the Pandora box is re-opened, even though with strong warnings,
>> I'll have one try :-)
>> How about standsFor? You're using it yourself in the announcement, in
>> fact...
>>
>>
>> Otherwise:
>>>
>>> (aside: a possibility here might be to declare foaf:focus a sub
>>> property of inverse of dcterms:isReferencedBy)
>>
>> I'm not sure we should go that way: DC's property seems very
>> bibliography-style citation-oriented...
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Antoine
>>
>>
>>> +cc: Leigh
>>>
>>> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 3:26 PM, Simon Spero<ses@unc.edu>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Dan-
>>>>
>>>> can i suggest using a different word  than focus, as this is term of art
>>>> in
>>>> controlled vocabularies. It is used when referring to
>>>> modified/specialized
>>>> "terms".
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks for the feedback. It seems that words are like Internet domain
>>> names; all the good ones are taken!
>>>
>>> To understand the extent of the "it's already in use" problem, could I
>>> ask you to post a few sentences using 'focus' from the literature?
>>> Even one would help.
>>>
>>> Naming RDF terms is something of a nightmare, because RDF is designed
>>> to allow information to flow beyond its original comfort-zone;
>>> whatever we choose here will show up in all kinds of unexpected
>>> contexts, including the Web pages of various publishers.
>>>
>>> I originally liked the 'skos:it' (and skos:as inverse) since 'it' had
>>> the charm of being at least easy to spell and quick to type. However
>>> after bouncing 'it' around in discussions 'it' transpired that 'it'
>>> was a bit too clever for 'its' own good, as a name. The 'focus' name
>>> came from discussions with Leigh Dodds, who I Cc: here. Some of our
>>> notes are in http://wiki.foaf-project.org/w/term_focus (btw each FOAF
>>> term now has a Wiki page for annotations).
>>>
>>>> Possible labels that might work could be  isReferredToBy ; SKOS concepts
>>>> are
>>>> intentional-with-a-t, so reference is a natural label;
>>>> isFoafProxyForIntentionReferencedBySKOSConcept is awful ComputerDeutch.
>>>
>>> So I see the logic behind 'isReferredToBy', however I'm cautious for a
>>> few reasons. Firstly the inverse direction adds a level of confusion,
>>> so we'd want to have 'references', eg. "skos_3 :references thing_23".
>>> And since we're operating in the context of RDF, not to mention
>>> hypertext, there are plenty of other contexts in which 'references'
>>> gets used - mainly with documents. Which puts us in the awkward
>>> situation of deciding whether to re-use an existing more general
>>> purpose term that talks about reference; eg.
>>> http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/ has
>>> http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/#terms-isReferencedBy
>>> already --- "A related resource that references, cites, or otherwise
>>> points to the described resource."  ... or if we proceed with a term
>>> that is explicitly for use with skos:Concept, we should expect to see
>>> it accidentally misused by anyone who is fumbling around looking for a
>>> nice term to use when one thing references, mentions, or identifies
>>> another thing.
>>>
>>> (aside: a possibility here might be to declare foaf:focus a sub
>>> property of inverse of dcterms:isReferencedBy)
>>>
>>>> Foaf person "Paul The Octopus" isReferredTo by SKOS Concept "#PTO1".
>>>>
>>>> Where "#PTO1" isSubjectOf "#document" "Decideabity and tractablity of
>>>> logical inference with binary serial octacles".
>>>>
>>>> (The halting problem has time complexity PTO(1) but other tasks may
>>>> require
>>>> an infinite series of questions.)
>>>
>>> Saying that the concept *references* the real world entity seems a
>>> tiny bit strong anyway; I guess I'd say 'reference' with regard to the
>>> concept's documentation, or with regard to a use of the concept in
>>> some document. But at some level this is all metaphor anyhow; nothing
>>> is really 'focussing' either. I had hoped 'focus' was a word that came
>>> with relatively little baggage in this community and amongst Web
>>> technologists, since 'topic' and 'subject' are already heavily
>>> over-used.
>>>
>>> I think 'references' will prove too general/broad to use directly
>>> (people will immediately start applying it with document 'mentions'
>>> and hyperlinks), but I appreciate the feedback and suggestion. Same
>>> with Bernard's 'referent', even though yes the basic idea is that the
>>> concepts are proxying / standing in for / indirectly identifying /
>>> referring to some real world entities.
>>>
>>> cheers,
>>>
>>> Dan
>>>
>>> ps. Another terminology possible ingredient; in FOAF we have a
>>> property foaf:primaryTopic which points from a document to the thing
>>> the document is primarily about. It has an inverse, isPrimaryTopicOf
>>> too.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Bernard Vatant
> Senior Consultant
> Vocabulary & Data Engineering
> Tel:       +33 (0) 971 488 459
> Mail:     bernard.vatant@mondeca.com
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Received on Tuesday, 10 August 2010 17:52:30 UTC