RE: Proposal for a SPEK vocabulary RE: Subjects and perspectives in SKOS : the jack of all trades ...

Leonard

Thanks for the feedback. As said before, those examples were quite random and I appreciate
any suggestion to improve them.

> As I am not an "RDF techie" I'll not comment on that aspect, but would
> just like to suggest some changes in the examples, because they contain
> several invalid relationships that I would not like to see propagated.

Agreed, but don't forget that all the point of aspects and perspectives is to make the
notion of "valid" or "invalid" relationships *specific to a perspective*.

> At present it appears to me that you have the relationships (if I may
> avoid the complexity of RDF by expressing them in a variation of
> conventional thesaurus form, assuming English as the default language):

> Wetness
> fr      Humidité
> UF-fr   Hygrométrie
> UF      Moisture
> BT      Measurement
>         Hygrometry

OK ... except for the last one. Agreed, you have to look closely at the code to see that,
but "Hygrometry" is not defined as an instance of skos:Concept, but of spek:Term (actually
maybe I should have defined this class in another namespace). The semantics of the
property "usedTerm" is maybe unclear, but it intends to provide a bridge between the SKOS
framework where terms are attributes of concepts, and another yet to be completely
specified, where "Term" is a class (allowing e.g. to put notes on synonyms, and so on)

So ex:Hygrometry does not fit in the Thesaurus framework, and actually you don't see it at
all in the Thesaurus perspective.

> Measurement
> UF      Measure
> NT      Wetness

OK

> Hygrometry
> fr      Hygrométrie
> UF      Moisture level
> UF-fr   Taux d'humidité
> DEF-fr  Mesure du taux d'humidité dans l'atmosphère
> DEF     Measurement of the moisture level in the atmosphere

> Wetness is a property of materials, and not a kind, part or instance of
> the activity "measurement" or of the material "moisture".

Hmm. Not sure I follow you completely, but you are certainly right.

> Hygrometry is an activity, and therefore could be considered a kind of
> measurement, but it is not a broader term of the property measured.

Look more closely :)
It is not declared as such, actually. As said above, it belongs to a different
perspective.

> "Measure" is ambiguous - it might be the result of a measurement
> activity, or a measuring instrument, or a part of the verb "to measure",
> not normally acceptable in a thesaurus.

OK

> If you want to retain this example, a better set of relationships would
> be:

> wetness
> UF      humidity
>         moisture level
>         dryness

I'm amazed to see dryness as a synonym of wetness, but so be it ...

> UF-fr   humidité
>         taux d'humidité

OK

> RT      moisture
>         hygrometry

No, hygrometry is *not* a related concept.

> measurement
> NT      hygrometry
> NT-fr   hygrométrie
>
> hygrometry
> fr      hygrométrie
> BT      measurement
> RT      wetness
>         moisture
> DEF     Measurement of the moisture level in the atmosphere
> DEF-fr  Mesure du taux d'humidité dans l'atmosphère
>
> moisture
> RT      wetness
>         hygrometry

Same remarks here. All you write above boils down to try and put "hygrometry" is the same
perspective as "wetness", the unique Thesaurus perspective. It's exactly what SPEK wants
to avoid :(

> Sorry to be pedantic about something which is not the main point that
> you were wishing to illustrate, but I thought it best to clear it up now
> in case your example is developed and incorporated in further documents.

At least it shows that the examples are confusing enough to let smart people as you miss
the point altogether :(
So I agree they have to be improved or completely changed. Actually I built on an example
in the SKOS Guide, maybe it was not a good idea.

Bernard

Received on Friday, 21 October 2005 16:12:40 UTC