Re: unique altLabels

This is quite true of single controlled vocabularies. Having one label
possibly provide two different concepts means you need to be careful to
distinguish which one is being selected - generally implying an extra
verification step in the interface.

On the other hannd, in merging vocabularies, this is going to happen. It also
allows us to explore the case where people's actual usage means that one
label is used for two different concepts. Since  people commnicate through
labels (e.g. words) rather than concepts (e.g. telepathically transferring
mental models), I think this is important in our goal of being able to use
the thesaurus work for the real world.

One intersting application, then, is to look up any concepts that do share a
label, and work out if there is an optimisation that can be done to work
around it - is the most helpful thing to offer the preferredLabel? A
definition? Is it feasible to remove the label altogether, and force people
to search using a different term?

cheers

Chaals

On Mon, 15 Mar 2004, Miles, AJ (Alistair)  wrote:

>
>Leonard wrote:
>[Quote from SKOS-Core guide:]
>"It is perfectly reasonable, however, to assign a concept a preferred label
>that is also an alternative label for some other concept."
>>
>> This is contrary to thesaurus practice and standards, and would cause
>> problems. Labels should be unique, and are made so by the
>> addition of a
>> qualifier in parentheses if necessary.
>>
>
>Leonard could you outline exactly the problems this would cause?
>
>Al.
>

Charles McCathieNevile  http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  tel: +61 409 134 136
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Received on Monday, 15 March 2004 07:17:50 UTC