Re: [SKOS]: [ISSUE 44] BroaderNarrowerSemantics

Hi Leonard,

Leonard Will wrote:
> It just means that within the [Keyword AAA] scheme it is valid to
> pre-coordinate these concepts into strings such as
> 
> FLEET MANAGEMENT : COMMITTEES
> 
> or
> 
> LEGAL SERVICES : COMMITTEES : Agenda
> 
>> To date, my experience using SKOS has been very positive -- the loose
>> semantic rules around SKOS make it very quick and easy to do useful work
>> with it.
> 
> As far as I know, SKOS has not yet been developed to represent
> pre-coordinated strings of concepts of this type. It would be a gross
> distortion of the relationships to implement Keyword AAA's use of BT/NT
> as though these were valid thesaural relationships.

True.  What I'm actually doing is translating Keyword AAA into a 
fully-expanded version of the pre-coordinated strings, i.e.

<skos:Concept 
rdf:about="http://www.naa.gov.au/kaaa/fleet.management-committees">
   <skos:prefLabel>FLEET MANAGEMENT - Committees</skos:prefLabel>
   <skos:broader 
rdf:resource="http://www.naa.gov.au/kaaa/fleet.management" />
</skos:Concept>

While the resulting document obviously contains more entries, it also 
makes the available thesaurus hierarchies much clearer.

<snip>
> I have not seen a convincing illustration of the need to represent
> intransitive BT/NT relationships, or examples of intransitive
> relationships which still conform to thesaurus standards. I would
> therefore prefer SKOS to assume that such relationships are
> transitive until someone demonstrates the need for more complexity.

My argument would simply be this:  The <skos:narrower /> element comes 
with a set of common sense, plain English semantic assumptions.

Subclassing this element allows us to simply say "all of the above, 
*plus* it is now transitive".

On the other hand, it is less useful to assume transitivity and say "it 
is no longer transitive", because a negative assertion is weaker than a 
positive one.  For example, is there such a thing as "partially 
transitive" (less than 3 degrees of separation)?

Regards,

-- Stephen.

Received on Tuesday, 15 January 2008 13:32:12 UTC