Re: Ontology Wars? Concerned

All,

I think Nathan is raising an important problem: How can the average 
newcomer figure out what to use when there are so many options that it hard 
to discern?

On Wednesday 18. November 2009 20:54:58 Bill Roberts wrote:
> I think an attempt at standardisation on the one 'true' set of  
> ontologies is futile, not scalable and ultimately a dead end.   

Indeed.

> However, using suitable existing ontologies in a sensible way leads to  
> a kind of lingua franca of properties and classes that supports a  
> useful interchange.

Yes, and this is important: The semweb approach is that the economy of 
creating something new and the overhead of having it interoperate will get 
people to put effort into reusing. However, the problem is that it costs 
too much right now to figure out what to use.

Also, the tools we have to show for how choose ontologies aren't good 
enough, I feel. www.Schemaweb.info, for example was nice, but the latest 
blog post was in 2005. And even if you can get an overview, it doesn't 
really help in choosing.

I think we need a Wiki, where people will post what their problem were, 
what data they needed, what data they had, which ontologies they needed, 
and what they did to meet these needs.

Eventually, this will evolve into a reference site with best practices for 
each problem newcomers present, and provide a launchpad for ventures beyond 
what's there with minimal cost.

Cheers,

Kjetil
-- 
Kjetil Kjernsmo
kjetil@kjernsmo.net
http://www.kjetil.kjernsmo.net/

Received on Thursday, 19 November 2009 22:30:55 UTC