RE : [ISSUE-77] [ISSUE-48] Re: [Dbpedia-discussion] Skos subject properties are deprecated

Hi,

I'm afraid I have to support all these claims, Richard :-)
I don't remember the precise reference, but I read once that an antelope becomes a document as soon as it is in a zoo, which makes quite some sense to me.

Actually in your wikipedia case there might be a problem anyway. I would not say that it is the TimBL resource which is about the history of the net, but its description on wikipedia: what if this description had been purely biological (size, hair color, preferred beer)? In this case the categorization of the resource you describe under "history of the internet" would be problematic, wouldn't it?

Cheers, (and thank you all of all for this very interesting discussion on an important issue for SKOS. For the moment no formal decision has been taken whether to deprecate skos:subject and to "replace" it by dc:subject, so any input is welcome)

Antoine

-------- Message d'origine--------
De: public-esw-thes-request@w3.org de la part de Simon Spero
Date: jeu. 24/01/2008 18:47
À: Richard Cyganiak
Cc: Mikael Nilsson; Bernard Vatant; Peter Ansell; dbpedia-discussion@lists.sourceforge.net; SKOS
Objet : Re: [ISSUE-77] [ISSUE-48] Re: [Dbpedia-discussion] Skos subject properties are deprecated
 

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