Re: SemWeb terminology page

  I have to say that I think that 'value vocabulary' and 'element 
vocabulary' make the most sense for me.  As soon as we start doing 
things like 'library vocabulary' and 'semantic web vocabulary' we start 
defining what we're talking about in terms of different communities of 
practice rather than function, and it all starts looking like the US 
Congress (not a good thing, for those of you who don't have to watch it 
up close).

Diane

On 12/2/10 9:37 PM, Thomas Baker wrote:
> Hi Jodi,
>
> On Thu, Dec 02, 2010 at 10:13:47PM +0000, Jodi Schneider wrote:
>> The use of 'vocabulary' with different modifiers seems
>> doomed to fail. That's because, for me, I find it difficult
>> to mentally distinguish 'Value vocabulary' and 'element
>> vocabulary'. The idea of a 'library vocabulary' and 'semantic
>> web vocabulary' is just barely understandable enough for me
>> to handle.
> I'm not sure I follow.  "Semantic Web vocabulary" I can
> understand, but is the use of "vocabulary" uniform enough
> in the library world for it to make sense to speak of a
> "library vocabulary"?
>
>> I'd be very, very happy if someone could propose an
>> alternative which didn't use 'vocabulary' twice. I fear
>> abbreviation as well as the assumption that, oh, yeah, we know
>> what vocabularies are (with different resultant assumptions
>> depending on one's background).
> "Metadata element set" has been proposed as an equivalent
> to "element vocabulary".  I would argue, however, that
> speaking of "element vocabularies" and "value vocabularies"
> usefully underlines the fact that in the Linked Data context,
> the two types are comparable as Semantic Web (or RDF)
> "vocabularies".
>
> I'm convinced that there are no terms we could come up with
> that would not evoke the wrong associations for _someone_.
> This is an exercise in coming up with terms that roughly evoke
> the right sorts of things for as many people as possible.
> Whatever terms we choose, we then have to define them clearly
> and concisely, up-front -- as in "when we say 'vocabulary',
> we mean...".
>
> But I hear your strong view on this and would be interested
> to know if others share the fear that using "vocabulary" in
> this broader sense would simply prove to be too confusing to
> too many people.
>
> Tom
>

Received on Friday, 3 December 2010 03:24:19 UTC