Re: SKOS ISSUE-39: clarification?

Hi Margherita,

Thanks for the comments on minor/majorMatch!

> (example: c_34708_ÆÀÊö_Review  InexactMatch
> c_2736_Evaluation_ÆÀ¹À )
> But if I well remember the InexactMatch was deprecated, right?
>   

I guess so. But of course there is nothing preventing you to create your
own mapping property until some workgroup finds something fitting the
situation ;-)
> Personally I think that overlappingMatch is somehow similar to InexactMatch
> ... the idea is always to explain to people that 2 concepts may have
> something in common...
>
> relatedMatch I do not really like very much because seems to me more
> difficult to understand.
>   

:-( the discussion we had today in our teleconf just concluded in the
opposite direction: we would drop overlappingMatch, and keep relatedMatch.
The motivation for it was that overlapping was a bit too specific
(Alistair came with examples about overlapping time periods)
Also, while the distinction between related and overlapping is not 100%
clear, keeping relatedMatch/broadMatch/narrowMatch makes a more coherent
counterpart to the standard broader/narrower/related semantic relations
of SKOS.

In the end, the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that
people have so different situations in mind for these two variants of
"inexact" match could fit. You say that "inexact" means "having
something in common", and your example about Review and Evaluation could
well be a "related" link if the two concepts were in a same concept
scheme...

But of course I might be wrong. Your feedback (as well as Emma's and other's) would
be very interesting here.

Cheers,

Antoine

>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: public-swd-wg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-swd-wg-request@w3.org] On
> Behalf Of Antoine Isaac
> Sent: 04 December 2007 16:22
> To: Emma McCulloch
> Cc: SKOS; SWD WG
> Subject: Re: SKOS ISSUE-39: clarification?
>
>
>
> Hi Emma,
>
> Thanks for the quick feedback!
> Actually the fact that some application were rather looking at thesaurus 
> terms was also a reason for introducing skos:relatedMatch, because 
> overlappingMatch is very much resource-oriented (even though I do think 
> it is useful for many cases).
> If you find examples, these would be highly welcome. As already said, my 
> proposal is to be discussed. If the community thinks that one of 
> overlappingMatch or relatedMatch should be dropped, then let it be that 
> way...
>
> Cheers,
>
> Antoine
>
>   
>> Hi Antoine,
>>  
>> Many thanks for your reply; it has definitely cleared a few things up 
>> for me.
>>  
>> I totally agree with the proposed deprecation of major and minorMatch. 
>> We found it particulary difficult to come up with an example of what might
>>     
> constitute a minorMatch and the division at the 50% point was extremely
> difficult to gague, as you say. I also agree that overlappingMatch is a
> valuable mapping type and will be far more straightforward to apply. I think
> we're finding the application of the mapping vocab quite difficult in HILT
> generally, since SKOS is geared towards equivalence between indexed
> resources, whereas we are looking purely at thesaurus terms with no
> attachment to actual resources.
>   
>>  
>> The platypus/egg example has made things clearer (as has your 
>> France/War example) but I believe there will be instances where the
>>     
> distinction between related and overlapping might be more blurred. I'm not
> absolutely convinced that they are sufficiently distinct if both are to be
> used in inter thesaurus mapping. I'll try to find some examples of this in
> our ongoing mapping work.
>   
>>  
>> Thanks again, your response is much appreciated,
>> Emma
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> From: public-esw-thes-request@w3.org on behalf of Antoine Isaac
>> Sent: Mon 03/12/2007 21:45
>> To: SKOS; Emma McCulloch
>> Cc: SWD WG
>> Subject: Re: SKOS ISSUE-39: clarification?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Dear Emma,
>>
>> I'm very glad to have some comments by someone from HILT! I will try 
>> to answer your questions below:
>>   
>>     
>>> 1)       What is the status of this issue and proposal (ISSUE-39)?
>>>
>>>     
>>>       
>> The issue states that there is a requirement for SKOS (i.e. conceptual 
>> mapping links) that is not dealt with in the current version of SKOS. 
>> And [1] is a proposal to tackle this issue, by having the SKOS 
>> namespace featuring some constructs devoted to mapping representation. 
>> Even if SKOS mapping (I'll keep the MVS you use for it) is around, it 
>> is not stable and has no official W3C status. Notice that for the 
>> moment [1] has no official status either, it's just a proposal to be 
>> discussed. Your comments/questions are therefore highly welcome.
>>
>>   
>>     
>>> 2)       ISSUE-39 states that Major/minorMatch are deprecated, along with
>>> classes AND, OR and NOT. It also 'transfers' skos:mappingRelation, 
>>> skos:exactMatch; skos:broadMatch and skos:narrowMatch from the MVS 
>>> into the standard SKOS vocabulary. Does this mean that the MVS will 
>>> no longer be used
>>> if this proposal is accepted?
>>>
>>>     
>>>       
>> Yes, the current proposal states that MVS would not exist as such any 
>> more. Some of its elements would be purely deprecated 
>> (major/minorMatch) while some other would be technically deprecated 
>> but in practice moved to the 'official' SKOS namespace. the latter 
>> case would be true for the mappingRelations, but also perhaps for 
>> AND/OR/NOT. The resolution for the last elements would wait till a 
>> resolution for another issue, ISSUE-40 [2] Notice again that this is a 
>> proposal, which can be adjusted. For example, even if people agree on 
>> removing major/minorMatch, there could be a consensus on keeping the 
>> official mapping vocabulary in the same separate namespace that is 
>> used now (http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/mapping)
>>
>>   
>>     
>>> 3)       skos:relatedMatch and skos:overlappingMatch are introduced: could
>>> you please provide a definition of relatedMatch (assuming this is for 
>>> inter-thesaurus mapping) and perhaps an example? I'm not clear of the 
>>> distinction between this and overlappingMatch, at a practical level.
>>>
>>>     
>>>       
>> Before answering this question: is the platypus/egg example in [1] not 
>> clear enough? If yes, please say so, and I'll try to find another 
>> one...
>>
>> That being said, the difference between relatedMatch and 
>> overlappingMatch is not 100% obvious even to me. The main motivation 
>> is that the previous SKOS mapping specification was assuming a quite 
>> 'mechanical', extensional approach to partial mappings. 
>> minor/majorMatch were defined on the basis that resources were 
>> described by both mapped concepts. If I wanted to remove 
>> minor/majorMatch (because I find the 50% criterion too much 
>> arbitrary), I had to find something with the same kind of criterion to 
>> replace them (because I thought there was some point in representing 
>> this "overlapping extensions" situations). So overlappingMatch is 
>> defined as a relation that holds when there is a set of documents 
>> potentially described by the two concepts at the same time. The 
>> problem is that this does not render the associative "related" link 
>> between terms from a thesaurus. Imagine two concepts, "France" and 
>> "War", coming from two thesauri. In a library, there will be an 
>> overlap between the sets of books indexed by the two concepts. Yet, I 
>> dare not imagine that there would be a "related" link between the two 
>> concepts, if they stood withing one single thesaurus. If a searcher is 
>> interested in resources about "France", you will not generally try to 
>> point him to resources about War. In my opinion, this is a case where 
>> you would have an overlapingMatch but no relatedMatch. Does this make 
>> enough sense? (please do not hesitate to say if you are not fully 
>> convinced)
>>
>>   
>>     
>>> 4)       The first version of ISSUE-39 proposed to introduce
>>> skos:equivalentConcept as a replacement for skosm:exactMatch - has 
>>> this idea now been dropped?
>>>
>>>     
>>>       
>> Yes. The first proposal tried to deprecate the current MVS as much as 
>> possible, and to have it replaced it by the exsiting SKOS semantic 
>> relations (broader, related, narrower, but there is no equivalence 
>> link until now in this part of SKOS). Given that this proposal has not 
>> been very popular, I took the inverse stance, which is to keep mapping 
>> links distinct from semantic relations. I thought that in this case it 
>> would be better to stay as close as possible to the MVS elements.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Antoine
>>
>> [1] 
>> http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/wiki/SkosDesign/ConceptualMapping/Propos
>> alTwo
>> [2] http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/track/issues/40
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>   
>>     
>
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 4 December 2007 19:23:29 UTC