RE: Quick comment from new SKOS user

Hi Brian,
I understand your choice, and I concur that it makes sense that way
round. I actually wasn't advocating a change to the meaning, I was
merely trying to point out that, as a new SKOS user, I tripped over the
*potential* ambiguity inherent in the name.  I regard myself as
moderately clueful in the arcane world of RDF, so I infer this may
happen to other newcomers as well.  I accept that it's too late to
change the name from skos:narrower to skos:hasNarrower or something else
with directionality built-in, so my advocacy was to make the text in the
guide (I was looking at version 2004-11-25) a bit more explicit.  Sorry
if that wasn't clear from my message.

Ian


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Matthews, BM (Brian) [mailto:B.M.Matthews@rl.ac.uk] 
> Sent: 06 January 2005 12:13
> To: Dickinson, Ian John (HP Labs, Bristol, UK); public-esw-thes@w3.org
> Subject: RE: Quick comment from new SKOS user
> 
> 
> Ian,
> 
> Point taken, I accept that there is an ambiguity - there
> has been a long history of different names for this most 
> fundamental of thesaurus relationships in SKOS and its predecessors!
> 
> The interpretation we have settled on :
> 
> C0 skos:narrower C1
> =
> "C0 has the narrower concept C1"
> 
> is more natural if you think of it "operationally" in the 
> directed labelled graph.  To answer the query:
> "From concept C0 find me all its narrower concepts". 
> then you follow all the skos:narrower properties from C0.
> With the other interpretation, you would follow the 
> skos:broader, which would seem odd!
> 
> The versions of SKOS Core guide 
> http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/thes/1.0/guide/#3.7.1
> and
> http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core/guide/2004-11-25.html
> demonstrates how the property should be interpreted.
> 
> Brian

Received on Thursday, 6 January 2005 12:25:05 UTC