Re: FOAF spec revised - addtion of foaf:focus, a skos extension linking topical and factual information

+cc: Leigh

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 3:26 PM, Simon Spero <ses@unc.edu> wrote:
> Dan-
>
> can i suggest using a different word  than focus, as this is term of art in
> controlled vocabularies. It is used when referring to modified/specialized
> "terms".


Thanks for the feedback. It seems that words are like Internet domain
names; all the good ones are taken!

To understand the extent of the "it's already in use" problem, could I
ask you to post a few sentences using 'focus' from the literature?
Even one would help.

Naming RDF terms is something of a nightmare, because RDF is designed
to allow information to flow beyond its original comfort-zone;
whatever we choose here will show up in all kinds of unexpected
contexts, including the Web pages of various publishers.

I originally liked the 'skos:it' (and skos:as inverse) since 'it' had
the charm of being at least easy to spell and quick to type. However
after bouncing 'it' around in discussions 'it' transpired that 'it'
was a bit too clever for 'its' own good, as a name. The 'focus' name
came from discussions with Leigh Dodds, who I Cc: here. Some of our
notes are in http://wiki.foaf-project.org/w/term_focus (btw each FOAF
term now has a Wiki page for annotations).

> Possible labels that might work could be  isReferredToBy ; SKOS concepts are
> intentional-with-a-t, so reference is a natural label;
> isFoafProxyForIntentionReferencedBySKOSConcept is awful ComputerDeutch.

So I see the logic behind 'isReferredToBy', however I'm cautious for a
few reasons. Firstly the inverse direction adds a level of confusion,
so we'd want to have 'references', eg. "skos_3 :references thing_23".
And since we're operating in the context of RDF, not to mention
hypertext, there are plenty of other contexts in which 'references'
gets used - mainly with documents. Which puts us in the awkward
situation of deciding whether to re-use an existing more general
purpose term that talks about reference; eg.
http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/ has
http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/#terms-isReferencedBy
already --- "A related resource that references, cites, or otherwise
points to the described resource."  ... or if we proceed with a term
that is explicitly for use with skos:Concept, we should expect to see
it accidentally misused by anyone who is fumbling around looking for a
nice term to use when one thing references, mentions, or identifies
another thing.

(aside: a possibility here might be to declare foaf:focus a sub
property of inverse of dcterms:isReferencedBy)

> Foaf person "Paul The Octopus" isReferredTo by SKOS Concept "#PTO1".
>
> Where "#PTO1" isSubjectOf "#document" "Decideabity and tractablity of
> logical inference with binary serial octacles".
>
> (The halting problem has time complexity PTO(1) but other tasks may require
> an infinite series of questions.)

Saying that the concept *references* the real world entity seems a
tiny bit strong anyway; I guess I'd say 'reference' with regard to the
concept's documentation, or with regard to a use of the concept in
some document. But at some level this is all metaphor anyhow; nothing
is really 'focussing' either. I had hoped 'focus' was a word that came
with relatively little baggage in this community and amongst Web
technologists, since 'topic' and 'subject' are already heavily
over-used.

I think 'references' will prove too general/broad to use directly
(people will immediately start applying it with document 'mentions'
and hyperlinks), but I appreciate the feedback and suggestion. Same
with Bernard's 'referent', even though yes the basic idea is that the
concepts are proxying / standing in for / indirectly identifying /
referring to some real world entities.

cheers,

Dan

ps. Another terminology possible ingredient; in FOAF we have a
property foaf:primaryTopic which points from a document to the thing
the document is primarily about. It has an inverse, isPrimaryTopicOf
too.

Received on Tuesday, 10 August 2010 08:13:29 UTC