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

+cc: Libby, FOAF co-editor

On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 7:48 PM, Young,Jeff (OR) <jyoung@oclc.org> wrote:
> Here three ideas to relieve the pressure on owl:sameAs:
>
> 1) Promote the use of umbel:isLike
> 2) Suggest to FOAF that they add an informal "sameAs" property to their ontology:
> 3) Create our own "mashup" ontology with an informally defined mashup:sameAs property.

Re (2), I've considered this and would be willing to try it, if there
was some wider support for the idea --- and of course a good candidate
definition. The logic of the relationship is slippery. It needs to be
applicable both between two distinct entities that are somehow close,
but also when linking two different mentions of the exact-same entity.
The name is also critically important, since in my experience nobody
reads the spec!

I've talked a bit with Ed Summers in particular about the scoping of
FOAF, since he felt initially at least that the 'topic' stuff wasn't
at home there. From my point of view as a spec editor, there is
certainly a lot still to tidy up so 'mission creep' can be a
distraction. However we have always had topics in scope, since we
began by focussing on capturing more of the erm 'meaning' of
homepages. In addition since FOAF is one of the most widely used RDF
namespaces, there is a good chance in any given RDF doc that it is
already being used / declared, and so if we add in a few awkward
'misfit' properties, I am happy if it also plays a general supporting
'utility' role for making linked RDF easier to deploy. The project was
originally called "RDFWeb" after all, so I feel no compunction to
stick only to listing properties of people.  In FOAF we are as
concerned with linking people *to* information (and to other
well-formed people!) as we are with providing information *about*
people.

So I think the sticking point here is the lack of a simple, intuitive
name and definition. If I understand the core requirement, it's that
it will sometimes be used between similar or easily-confused
individuals, and sometimes with just one individual. If the LLD
incubator comes up with a proposal that takes the pressure off of
owl:sameAs, I think there's a reasonable case to add it into FOAF as a
supporting general-purpose utility term. Naming is really hard though.
Any suggestions?

cheers,

Dan

Received on Friday, 9 July 2010 15:09:25 UTC