- From: Simon Spero <sesuncedu@gmail.com>
- Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:47:58 -0500
- To: Richard Cyganiak <richard@cyganiak.de>
- Cc: Mikael Nilsson <mikael@nilsson.name>, Bernard Vatant <bernard.vatant@mondeca.com>, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter@gmail.com>, dbpedia-discussion@lists.sourceforge.net, SKOS <public-esw-thes@w3.org>
On Jan 24, 2008, at 10:42 AM, Richard Cyganiak wrote: > On 24 Jan 2008, at 15:26, Simon Spero wrote: >>> Like skos:subject, dcterms:subject seems to be intended for use on >>> documents, not people or cities. Hence it doesn't really meet >>> DBpedia's requirements. >> The meaning of "document" in this context is extremely broad; if >> we follow Otlet's definition of a document as anything which can >> convey information to an observer(Buckland 1997), the term would >> seem to cover anything which can have a subject. >> >> By this standard, timbl is a document, but only when someone's >> looking. > > Sorry, but you lost me there. Where I live, people are not > documents, and I like it here. Following Otlet, people aren't documents by virtue of being people; they are only documents if they are carrying conveying some sort of information. For example, timbl as document can answer the question "what colour is Tim's hair?" Under this framework, it is quite reasonable to say that timbl (the person) is about "Berners-Lee, Tim." Simon
Received on Thursday, 24 January 2008 17:48:11 UTC