Re: [SKOS] "Mapping" vs "standard" relationships

On 22/1/09 19:07, Alistair Miles wrote:
[...]
> I would not use SKOS mapping properties to "enrich" a concept scheme
> published by someone else. I would use skos:broader, skos:narrower and
> skos:related. If you are concerned about whether these extra triples
> were asserted by the owner of the concept scheme or by someone else
> (e.g. me), you should keep track of where your triples came from.
>
> Hence I am suggesting a minimum commitment approach, because unless
> everyone agrees with what I just said, we won't have consensus.

FWIW I agree with what you just said. Since SPARQL arrived with named 
'graph' support, it has become quite easy to super-impose SKOS data from 
different sources. While lcsh.info was alive, I started to make a demo 
of this kind of overlay here - 
http://wiki.foaf-project.org/SanfordBergmanLCSHScorecard.

I think the idea as far as possible with RDF/RDFS is to avoid the 
meaning of words getting tangled up with the identity of the party using 
them. Sometimes there are exceptions, and the mapping stuff may be in 
that category, but in general, if we can keep the terms meaning the same 
thing (incl. having the same truth conditions) regardless of the user, 
life's simpler all round.


>> But in that case, my question would remain: Do we think that
>> the convention about choosing between mapping or standard
>> semantic relationship properties has _anything_ to do with
>> provenance?  Alistair thinks it is a bad idea for properties
>> to carry any connotation regarding authority or provenance,
>> but in last week's call I thought we were also implicitly
>> acknowledging that the "convention" had something to do with
>> provenance when Ralph suggested: "note that we recognize a need
>> for standard ways to communicate provenance in the Semantic
>> Web and when we have such mechanisms, this question of what
>> one thesaurus provider says versus what others say about the
>> thesaurus will become more explicit" [2] -- in other words,
>> to acknowledge that the "convention" has something to do with
>> provenance, even if we emphasize that "using the SKOS mapping
>> properties is no substitute for the careful management of
>> RDF graphs or the use of provenance mechanisms" [3].
>
> The sentence "using the SKOS mapping properties is no substitute for
> the ... use of provenance mechanisms" means exactly what it says. SKOS
> mapping properties tell you nothing about provenance (who said what).

I'm in agreement with Alistair and Attributed-to-Alistair above.

cheers,

Dan

--
http://danbri.org/

Received on Thursday, 22 January 2009 20:40:16 UTC