Re: [SKOS] Resolutions on concept semantics

It seems there are several interpretations of "saying nothing" here...
To me saying nothing on the disjointness amounts to say that there are 
not disjoint. The idea is that people can do what they want with their 
concepts, including declaring some as classes or keeping them distinct. 
If we have to find a common denominator for these different situations, 
then it is "non-disjointess".

As Daniel I also don't like the idea of letting people decide whether 
skos:concept is disjoint or not. SKOS is defined by us, and we cannot 
have people making different interpretations of the shared SKOS 
construct, especially when they can be conflicting.
What users can do of course is to say that *their* SKOS concepts are 
disjoint from owl:Class (e.g. by creating a subclass of skos:Concept 
that is disjoint with owl:Class). But this is another story...

Cheers,

Antoine
>
> I am opposed to *saying nothing* about disjointness between 
> skos:Concept and owl:Class (actually, in general I'm opposed to 
> leaving any semantics undefined in SKOS)--if you leave any semantics 
> up to the user to decide, then you ensure people will have different 
> meanings for the same entities and relations, making interoperability 
> impossible.
> Daniel
>
> Quoting "Miles, AJ (Alistair)" <A.J.Miles@rl.ac.uk>:
>
>>
>> Hi Antoine,
>>
>>> >
>>> > [following discussion on the OWL/SKOS patterns] ... we are not
>>> > discussing the introduction of new properties, but the semantics of
>>> > skos:Concept, in particular its disjointness with owl:Class
>>> > aliman: we will not say anything about the disjointness
>>> > sean: we should make clear that the omission is explicit
>>>
>>>  3. RESOLUTION: skos:Concept is not disjoint with owl:Class .
>>> Some instances of SKOS concept may be also declared (and
>>> treated) as OWL classes, and vice versa.
>>
>> I thought our resolution was to *say nothing* about disjointness  
>> between skos:Concept and owl:Class. That would give people the  
>> freedom to interpret them as disjoint, if they want to do that, or  
>> not, if they don't.
>>
>> That's what I tried to capture in:
>>
>> [1]  
>> <http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/wiki/SKOS/Reference/Concepts?action=recall&rev=10> 
>>
>>
>>> From [1] ...
>>
>> "The decision to leave the formal semantics of skos:Concept  
>> undefined has been made to allow different design patterns for using 
>>  SKOS in combination with more formal languages such as OWL to be  
>> explored.
>>
>> For example, interpreting skos:Concept and owl:Class as disjoint  
>> classes would be consistent with the semantics of SKOS.  
>> Alternatively, interpreting skos:Concept as a super-class of  
>> owl:Class would also be consistent with the semantics of SKOS."
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Al.
>>
>>
>
>
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 30 October 2007 09:51:51 UTC