rude categorisation

Hi all,

Thinking about the application of SKOS to things like weblog categorisation schemes, and also to traditional classification schemes ... it seems like the semantics of a 'categorisation' of an information resource against a concept are often ambiguous.  The two main meanings I have come across are *subject* (i.e. the categorisation says something about the subject of the information resource) and *type* (where the categorisation says something about the type of the resource).   

Given that there exists this kind of ambiguity, it doesn't seem right to use the skos:subject property across the board when dealing with weblog categorisations or classification schemes.  I'm thinking that we could create a more general property, e.g. 'skos:rudeCategorisation' which would be a semantically more appropriate vehicle for dumping any type of ambiguous categorisations into RDF.  The skos:subject property would then be a sub-property of this.  What do you think?

As an aside, I came across this kind of ambiguity in PACS (the Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme) when writing a report on classification schemes for SWAD-E, see [1].

Cheers,

Al.

[1] RDF Encoding of Classification Schemes http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/thes/8.5/

---
Alistair Miles
Research Associate
CCLRC - Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Building R1 Room 1.60
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Didcot
Oxfordshire OX11 0QX
United Kingdom
Email:        a.j.miles@rl.ac.uk
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Received on Tuesday, 1 March 2005 19:40:21 UTC