Re: Terminology Question concerning Web Architecture and Linked Data

Hi Alan,

I'm not a philosopher, but I have the feeling that the concept "correct" in 
a sence of matching reality does not really apply to the Semantic Web 
setting.

We are talking about machines that are supposed to process data from 
different sources. There is no such thing as "reality" for a machine. For 
the machine there is only data! (or knowledge if you prefer this term)

Therefore the question for the machine is: Should it trust a specific piece 
of data or not? Or more precisely how can it assess the quality of the data 
to a point where it matches the quality requirements of the user (human).

There are lots of different heuristics that a machine can apply to assess 
information quality, including content-based, context-based, rating-based 
heuristics.

For more details than you ever wanted to hear, please refer to my PhD thesis 
titeld "Quality-driven Information Filtering in the Context of Web-based 
Information System" 
http://sites.wiwiss.fu-berlin.de/suhl/bizer/pub/DisertationChrisBizer.pdf

Cheers

Chris

--
Chris Bizer
Freie Universität Berlin
+49 30 838 54057
chris@bizer.de
www.bizer.de
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alan Ruttenberg" <alanruttenberg@gmail.com>
To: "Dan Connolly" <connolly@w3.org>
Cc: "Chris Bizer" <chris@bizer.de>; <www-tag@w3.org>; "SW-forum Web" 
<semantic-web@w3.org>; "Linking Open Data" 
<linking-open-data@simile.mit.edu>; "Jonathan A Rees" <jar@mumble.net>
Sent: Friday, July 20, 2007 4:52 AM
Subject: Re: Terminology Question concerning Web Architecture and Linked 
Data


> On Jul 10, 2007, at 1:08 PM, Dan Connolly wrote:
>> On Sat, 2007-07-07 at 14:43 +0200, Chris Bizer wrote:
>>
>>> Question 3: Depending on the answer to question 1, is it correct  to use
>>> owl:sameAs [6] to state that http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/ 
>>> card#i and
>>> http://dbpedia.org/resource/Tim_Berners-Lee refer to the same  thing as 
>>> it is
>>> done in Tim's profile.
>>
>> Yes...
>>
>> That's sort of a circular question. It's correct because Tim says  it's 
>> correct, and he owns that name.
>
> That's not the usual sense of "correct". In this context, I believe  that 
> the wordnet sense of "correct" that is intended is
> "free from error; especially conforming to fact or truth"
>
> Or Wikipedia: "In everyday use, the correctness of a statement is 
> determined by whether or not it matches reality. People can think a 
> statement is correct and be wrong."
>
> If I had a profile that said, in effect, that I was president of the 
> United States, then that would be incorrect regardless of whether I  owned 
> the name (I am taking the "owned name" that you are referring  to to be 
> http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/card#i since that's the  only name in 
> the vicinity that Tim could correctly claim to be owned  by him).
>
> If I'm using the wrong sense of "correct", perhaps you could provide  me a 
> definition of "correct" by which I could understand your claim.
>
> Regards,
>
> -Alan
>

Received on Friday, 20 July 2007 07:58:46 UTC