- From: Sandhaus, Evan <sandhes@nytimes.com>
- Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:52:45 -0500
- To: Mike Bergman <mike@mkbergman.com>, Richard Cyganiak <richard@cyganiak.de>
- CC: Ross Singer <rossfsinger@gmail.com>, Bernard Vatant <bernard.vatant@mondeca.com>, Antoine Isaac <aisaac@few.vu.nl>, Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us>, SKOS <public-esw-thes@w3.org>
Just a quick thought to throw fuel on the fire with respect to SKOS and owl:sameAs. The question is asked. Can we declare a resource R of type skos:concept to be owl:sameAs a resource S which is of some "real-world" type (say person, place, etc)? To make this assertion, it is argued, would be to assert that S is a skos:concept, which to many (though not me) seems nonsense. It is suggested by some that perhaps we instead say that R is skos:[exactMatch|closeMatch|narrow|broader] to S. However, it turns out that the range of these properties is skos:concept, so you are again asserting that S is of type skos:concept. So you don't really resolve this dilemma using skos predicates, you just make it slightly more obscure. I am of the mind however, that skos:concept(s) need not be mutually exclusive from their real world counterparts. After all, when one examines the indexing vocabulary of (say) a book and finds the subject heading "United States of America" that heading is at once both a "subject heading/concept" and - it seems to me - inarguably also a country. The fundamental question seems to be can a subject heading at once signify and be an object. And, at least to my mind, I think it can. Does this square with the exact language of the SKOS recommendation? Probably not, but - since the original intent of skos - was to provide a framework for expressing indexing vocabularies (knowledge organization systems), it seems (to me) very much in keeping with the spirit of the effort. Anyways, that's my $0.02. All the best, Evan Sandhaus -- Evan Sandhaus Semantic Technologist New York Times Research + Development @kansandhaus (212)556-3826
Received on Friday, 13 November 2009 16:01:25 UTC