Re: [SKOS] The return of ISSUE-44 (was Re: TR : SKOS Reference Editor's Draft 23 December 2007)

On Jan 9, 2008, at 9:16 PM, Antoine Isaac wrote:

>
> Hello Simon, Dan (ccing this thread to the SWD list since it is  
> again about important stuff)
> -1
> As far as I'm concerned, we are not trying to propose with SKOS a  
> standard that would oblige KOS owners to re-engineer their  
> conceptual structures to fit our whishes. The objective is to easily  
> represent and to publish KOSs. So if there is enough cases of "non- 
> transitive" hierarchies (and I do believe it is the case) then it is  
> a wrong design decision to make skos:broader transitive.


Is it better  to label these relationships with the terms 'broader'   
and 'narrower' whilst defining them with the semantics of 'related'?  
Wouldn't it be better to use the standard labels to denote the  
standard semantics, and use a special label, disjoint from broader,  
for the non-hierarchical hierarchies?

The SKOS Core Guide[1] originally aligned itself with Z39.19/BS8723;   
I feel it's a mistake to abandon the standard semantics without also  
abandoning the standard labels. The Library of Congress adopted the BT/ 
NT labels for its syndetic relationships  in the LCSH, without fixing  
the semantics; this has not proven helpful :-)


Broader/Narrower Relationships

To assert that one concept is broader in meaning (i.e. more general)  
than another, where the scope (meaning) of one falls completely within  
the scope of the other, use the skos:broader property. To assert the  
inverse, that one concept is narrower in meaning (i.e. more specific)  
than another, use the skos:narrower property.
[...]
The properties skos:broader and skos:narrower are transitive properties.

See also section on hierarchies in BS8723.

  [1, §#sechierarchy]

Simon

[1]  Alistair Miles and Dan Brickley,SKOS Core Guide (November, 2005).  
Available at  http://www.w3.org/TR/swbp-skos-core-guide/

Received on Wednesday, 9 January 2008 22:01:48 UTC