Re: AW: AW: [SKOS] Transitive broader and ISSUE-56 (was The return of ISSUE-44 )

On Jan 14, 2008, at 7:29 AM, Antoine Isaac wrote:

> I'm not sure this would be 100% safe, as multiple ways of  
> specializing skos:broader can be thought of, cf ISSUE-56 [1]
> And these mixes, leading to possibly confusing hierarchies for  
> newcomers: consider the combination of "transitive"and "partitive"  
> specializations. We can specialize skos.broader into  
> skos:broaderTransitive, skos:broaderPartitive,  
> skos:broaderTransitivePartitive. If we consider other axes of  
> specialization (e.g. for "generic" and "instance" flavors of  
> hierarchy) this would blur the picture even more...
>
> On the other hand, given the number of reactions we had on this  
> transitive aspect of broader, we might just decide to introduce only  
> transitiveBroader, as an acknowledgement of the interest it gained.

Can somebody explain to me what 'broader' and 'narrower', unqualified,  
mean now?

Given that the whole semantics of SKOS are now completely undefined,  
and that the core guide is going to have to be completely rewritten,  
what do these terms mean.

We know that they can't be *any* kind of orderings.

We know that they can't be  associative relationships, because  
otherwise they'd just be called relationships.  We know that the  
language used in the SKOS Core Guide has previously been  taken from  
and aligned with Z39.19 et al, but that this is no longer acceptable.

Just calling an associative relationship hierarchical does not make it  
so.  The LC made tried that  twenty years ago.  Mary Dykstra(1988)  
explained the problems  with this approach (if you haven't read this  
article, it's very helpful background for this discussion).

I I have no problem with SKOS being used to represent false claims;  
I'm working with the LCSH, which, being of Congress, is riddled with  
the things. Redefining an existing concept so as to make the false  
claims become true brings in to question the whole exercise.  'Sorry  
if I'm sounding like a broken record on this, but the broadening that  
I'm most afraid of is  the whole thing going pear-shaped.

If having a transitive broader is too problematic, can we at least  
remove   unqualified broader and narrower completely?

Simon

[Dykstra(1988)]	Mary Dykstra. LC Subject Headings Disguised as a  
Thesaurus. Library Journal, 113(4):p42 –, March 1988. ISSN 03630277.  
URL http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?  
direct=true&db=aph&AN=6547855&site=ehost-live.

Making hierarchical relationships non hierarchical