Re: [SKOS] Possible issue: Uniqueness of skos:prefLabel [was Re: [SKOS] inconsistency between Guide and Specification

Hi Guus,

I have to agree with Antoine, especially his "rather stupid argument".
It seems to me that the inherent meaning and value of a "pref" Label
in the context of a concept is its singularity and that a constraint
_requiring_ (rather than simply recommending) language-specific
singularity of prefLable actually seems more reasonable to me than a
loosening of the restriction. Under the circumstances simply
recommending it seems like the least inhibitive approach.

--Jon

On 2/27/07, Antoine Isaac <aisaac@few.vu.nl> wrote:
>
> Hi Guus,
>
> I'm not really convinced by this argument, for two reasons:
> - relevance to domain practice: even if a motivation for the constraint
> in ISO and other thesaurus modelling approaches (especially term-based
> ones, which are still encountered in many situations) was this reference
> uniqueness, there are also strong normalization issues underway. People
> managing thesauri are often spending a lot of time distilling *the* term
> that embodies the concept in the best way. And while standard database
> have been allowing for unique keys for decades, they still keep to this
> constraint on the labels.
> - coherence of the model: if we remove all the cardinality constraints,
> what would be the indended meaning of a preferred label? This might
> sound a rather stupid argument, but I really cannot see what makes a
> label 'preferred' if its associated concept has two such labels.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Antoine
>
> >
> >
> >
> > Guus Schreiber wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> While trying to write down a resolution for the relationship between
> >> labels I found:
> >>
> >> in the Core Guide, section on Multilingual La belling [1]
> >>
> >> [[
> >>   It is recommended that no two concepts in the same concept scheme
> >> be given the same
> >>   preferred lexical label in any given language.
> >> ]]
> >>
> >> in the Core Specification, table of prefLabel [2]
> >>
> >> [[
> >>   No two concepts in the same concept scheme may have the same value
> >> for skos:prefLabel
> >>   in a given language.
> >> ]]
> >
> >
> > I see no need for placing a constraint on the uniqueness of
> > skos:prefLabel. While some/many vocabularies will actually abide to
> > this, the URI of the concept the label is related already ensures
> > uniqueness of the concept being identified (which I assume was the
> > reason for including this constraint in the ISO spec). I also suggest
> > that there is no need to place cardinality constraints on skos:prefLabel.
> >
> > The underlying rationale is that we should refrain from overcommiting
> > the SKOS specification when there is no clear need.
> >
> > I want to raise this as an issue and propose the above as a resolution.
> >
> >>
> >> The weaker constraint in the Guide makes sense to me. I will most
> >> likely propose an even weaker version in my resolution.
> >>
> >> Guus
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2005/WD-swbp-skos-core-guide-20051102/#secmulti
> >> [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-skos-core-spec/#prefLabel
> >
> >
>
>
>