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

Welcome Antoine to the brainstorming

Since the box is open, it's open :)

I like standsFor, but my latin culture would prefer a latin term, so why not
"represents" or even simply "presents" [1]
Well, I know, I will have the same remarks as for "referent" or "refersTo"
But I'm waiting for real good arguments against it. A concept is really a
way for a thing to be made *præsens*, in the various meanings of the
word* *such
as "really there" and "efficient".
See http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=praesens&la=la#lexicon
... or for not-so-young frenchies remembering their humanities years, the
good old Gaffiot I just discovered on-line.
http://www.lexilogos.com/latin/gaffiot.php?p=1225

Bernard

[1] Since no presentation is really new, any presentation is a
representation (and vice-versa) See
http://blog.hubjects.com/2009/11/representation-as-translation.html



2010/8/10 Antoine Isaac <aisaac@few.vu.nl>

> Hi Dan,
>
> I think I buy all the naming arguments below.
> But since the Pandora box is re-opened, even though with strong warnings,
> I'll have one try :-)
> How about standsFor? You're using it yourself in the announcement, in
> fact...
>
>
> Otherwise:
>
>  (aside: a possibility here might be to declare foaf:focus a sub
>> property of inverse of dcterms:isReferencedBy)
>>
>
> I'm not sure we should go that way: DC's property seems very
> bibliography-style citation-oriented...
>
> Cheers,
>
> Antoine
>
>
>
>  +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.
>>
>>
>>
>
>


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Bernard Vatant
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Vocabulary & Data Engineering
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