Re: [open-bibliography] MARC Codes for Forms of Musical Composition

On Wed, Jul 7, 2010 at 10:54 PM, William Waites <william.waites@okfn.org>wrote:

>
> I think that what you are getting at is that often people will try to give
> a single identifier to different things. This is a problem because different
> things should have different identifiers. If they have the same identifier
> than as you say it is impossible to figure out which properties belong with
> which. So much is true. But having multiple rdf:types does not imply that
> such a conflation has been made.
>
> In other words, this is true:
>
> 	?x a Conflation => ?x has multiple rdf:types
>
> but, this is not true:
>
> 	?x has multiple rdf:types => ?x a Conflation
>
>
>
William, I think, sums up my argument perfectly.

Andrew, you mentioned that you worry about the case of non-type-specific
vocabularies like DC muddying the waters of what they are referring to, but
I'm not sure it matters (since the assertions are attributes of the
/resource/, not the type).  I think the smell test comes in when you are
unsure if your assertions make sense across all rdf:types.  This is one of
the main reasons I don't like foaf:Persons also being skos:Concepts (for
example).  To say that Bob Dylan has a broader or narrower concept seems
strained.

That doesn't mean that being a foaf:Person and a mo:MusicArtist is, however.
 Bob Dylan as a songwriter foaf:knows the same people as he does as a
person.  Bob Dylan as a person was still a mo:member_of "The Traveling
Wilburys".

I agree with Bernard that the use of owl:sameAs may wind up being
problematic in the long run and I'm not sure when, how or if it can be
reconciled.  There's a big gulf between rdfs:seeAlso and owl:sameAs and,
unfortunately, there's not much to use in between.  People want to say that
they're talking about the same /thing/ as someone else but the only broadly
accepted way to do so (currently) is to pull out the atomic bomb that is
owl:sameAs.

Given that it was my RDF that set this entire thread off, however, what
exactly is the objection to the resources I've made available?

-Ross.