Re: data schema / vocabulary / ontology / repositories

On 14 Mar 2011, at 09:15, Bob Ferris wrote:
>> 2. The selection of ontologies listed is, to say the best, often biased or partly a random choice. I do not know any repository that
>> - lists more non-toy ontologies than abandoned PhD project prototypes.
> 
> I don't want to take a concrete position here, however, every ontology development has somewhere its starting point and is there usually not so popular. Nevertheless, the ontology design can be a good one, too. For that reason, why should be abandon these approach and brand them as evil?

The point in re-using a vocabulary or ontology is this: one joins a community of data publishers and re-users who have agreed on certain shared terms for shared concepts.

The abandoned PhD project type of ontology or vocabulary has no community around it. Therefore, one gains very little by re-using it.

This is why it's so important to involve multiple stakeholders from the start, and get feedback from real data owners and data users along the development process. That's the first and perhaps most important step in the process that you called “ontology marketing” elsewhere in this thread.

I touched upon these issues in a recent blog post:
http://richard.cyganiak.de/blog/2011/03/creating-an-rdf-vocabulary/

Best,
Richard

Received on Monday, 14 March 2011 10:14:07 UTC