RE: candidate and deprecated concepts

> Incidentally, a design question that arises (if there is 
> consensus that
> making these kinds of statement is valuable) is how to 
> represent the fact
> that a concept might be candidate/deprecated in one scheme, but not in
> another.
> 

Also, I think that describing the *stability* of a concept is disctinct from
describing the *status of a concept wrt a specific scheme*.

So I would like to be able to say (in RDF) both that:

'concept X is unstable'

... and ...

'concept X is a candidate in scheme Y'.

Al.


> 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: public-esw-thes-request@w3.org
> > [mailto:public-esw-thes-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Bernard Vatant
> > Sent: 11 October 2004 10:06
> > To: Stella Dextre Clarke; public-esw-thes@w3.org
> > Subject: RE: candidate and deprecated concepts
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > Stella
> > 
> > > The difference between a deprecated concept and a 
> > deprecated term may
> > > not be as clear as you might wish.
> > 
> > Sure, no more than the difference between a term or a 
> > concept, deprecated or not :)
> > 
> > > (And even the word "deprecated" is a
> > > bit strange to me in the context of thesauri. We usually just say
> > > non-preferred.)
> > 
> > Indeed? We currently in Mondeca work for a major actor in 
> > legal publication (Wolters
> > Kluwer Belgium), making a very intensive use of Thesauri, 
> > including e.g. their use for
> > automatic generation of publication index. And one of the 
> > strong requirements of the folks
> > in charge of Thesaurus management was indeed a proper 
> > handling of what they call
> > "deprecated terms". A deprecated term is a term that used to 
> > be preferred, and used as
> > such, and at some point of time in the history of the 
> > vocabulary was replaced by another
> > preferred term. After "deprecation" (so to speak) the 
> > once-preferred, and now deprecated
> > term, is kept as a synonym of the preferred term which 
> > replaces it. Whatever relationships
> > (BT-NT, USE, ...) of the deprecated term are re-located to 
> > the replacing term, and
> > indexation of documents is redirected.
> > 
> > So of course a deprecated term is non-preferred, but it used 
> > to be, and the system keeps
> > track of that if necessary.
> > 
> > > It is unusual to drop a concept altogether.
> > 
> > Of course the concept does not really change because the term 
> > is deprecated, since it's
> > replaced, it's simply the preferred term for it that changes. 
> > Concepts never die :)
> > 
> > > Normally one provides a lead-in entry pointing to the 
> > broader concept that covers the
> > > scope of the preferred term that is now to be "deprecated".
> > > It is conceivable that if it was decided that a large 
> > subject area with
> > > perhaps hundreds of concepts was now out-of-scope, then all the
> > > corresponding terms might be dropped without trace ( 
> > although this is
> > > not usually recommended). The thesaurus might well be renamed or
> > > rebranded to mark the transition.
> > 
> > This is another story ...
> > 
> > > Much more likely would be to decide that that subject 
> area should be
> > > indexed at a much shallower level of specificity.
> > 
> > I think Thesaurus structure can (should) be kept independent 
> > from the indexing
> > practices/applications that use the Thesaurus. See at the end 
> > the general remak about
> > declarative vs procedural properties. Several different 
> > indexing applications can use the
> > same Thesaurus at different levels of granularity, use or not 
> > use specific branches etc
> > ... This is the notion of index profile (also a requirement 
> > of the above quoted customer).
> > The index profile can be managed independently of the 
> > structure of the thesaurus itself.
> > You can say e.g. in the profile that you only use the three 
> > first levels of the Thesaurus
> > hierarchy, so whatever is indexed at a finer level of 
> > granularity will be re-indexed by
> > the relevant parent.
> > 
> > > So, for example, in a
> > > thesaurus for agricultural products, it might be decided 
> > that tropical
> > > products should no longer be covered in detail. Where 
> > previously you had
> > > Bananas, Pineapples, Brazil nuts etc as preferred terms ( with a
> > > hierarchy of BTs such as Tropical fruits all the way up 
> to Tropical
> > > products), you might leave just one term "Tropical 
> > products" to cover
> > > all of these. In the thesaurus you would organise entries such as
> > > "Bananas USE Tropical products" - perhaps hundreds of such 
> > entries. Now
> > > where is the "deprecated concept"? All we have is one very 
> > broad concept
> > > taking in tropical products at all levels of detail, and lots of
> > > non-preferred terms.
> > 
> > This is quite different from deprecation, it's changing the 
> > granularity of the Thesaurus.
> > And in such a case, you could just change the indexing 
> > profile, saying now that "Tropical
> > Products" is a "leaf term" for the indexing profile (meaning 
> > that everything below should
> > be indexed on that term).
> > 
> > > So the idea of a "deprecated concept" just feels a bit alien.
> > 
> > > I don't warm, either, to the idea of a concept getting 
> "replaced" by
> > > another one, unless they are so close that you would treat 
> > the two as
> > > quasi-synonymous. You are hardly going to replace Bananas 
> > with Washing
> > > machines?
> > 
> > There again, only terms are replaced, not concepts.
> > 
> > Bottom line : We need here to make distinct the *declarative* 
> > properties of concepts,
> > valid whatever the context of application and the 
> > *procedural* properties, applicable only
> > in specific contexts of use. For example seems to me that the 
> > BT-NT relationship between
> > "Tropical Fruits" and "Bananas" should be declarative, and 
> > kept existing whatever the
> > context, whereas the USE-UF relationship stated in order to 
> > use the Thesaurus at a broader
> > level of granularity, is procedural: you know pretty well 
> > that "Tropical Fruits" and
> > "Bananas" are distinct concepts, but in a certain context of 
> > application this distinction
> > is useless for whatever reason. It's different from, say, you 
> > had an ancient astronomical
> > thesaurus where "Evening Star" and "Morning Star" were 
> > thought as distinct concepts, and
> > you decide/discover at some point that in fact they both have 
> > to be replaced by "Planet
> > Venus". In this latter case, there is actually a 
> > (declarative) change in the conceptual
> > scheme.
> > It might be that the USE-UF relationship in Thesaurus is 
> > sometimes used in a declarative
> > sense, and sometimes in a procedural sense, leading to some 
> > ambiguities.
> > The above quoted notion of "index profile" allows to capture 
> > the procedural properties for
> > various contexts, while not changing the declarative 
> > properties in the (common) Thesaurus.
> > 
> > Regards
> > 
> > Bernard
> > 
> > Bernard Vatant
> > Senior Consultant
> > Knowledge Engineering
> > Mondeca - www.mondeca.com
> > bernard.vatant@mondeca.com
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
>

Received on Monday, 11 October 2004 13:30:51 UTC