Re: Property "geographic identifier" in LOCN

+1 Krzysztof and Sven. Vocabulary reuse is important, but if the 
originating semantics of a piece of vocabulary is ignored, then it's 
merely more data.

I believe it is central that we rethink how we organise the reuse of 
semantic vocabulary on the web.

Pascal.

On 1/10/2014 7:52 AM, Sven Schade wrote:
>>>>> I'm all for fighting against the obesity of having so many
>>>>> classes and properties which have exactly the same meaning,
>>>>> so either the resource is more specific and should indeed be
>>>>> created in the vocab or it is not and then, why not plain
>>>>> re-using the existing class/property?
>
>>> Well, yes but do they really have the same meaning? Most
>>> vocabularies that we see remain on the level of surface
>>> semantics. There are only a few ontologies and ontology design
>>> patterns out there that really restrict the interpretation
>>> towards the intended meaning, i.e., that really do some semantic
>>> engineering. In the most cases you just have to guess whether
>>> they actually talk about the same or not. So far, most of us have
>>> been very successful in creating a Linked Data cloud that is so
>>> convoluted that it is nearly impossible to use. On reuse/misuse
>>> of lat and long you may find this article entertaining:
>>> http://stko.geog.ucsb.edu/location_linked_data . For instance, it
>>> uses Linked Data to show that humans never landed on the Moon.
>
>>> IMHO, you can just define whatever you want in your local
>>> namespace, give it as much semantics as possible (or necessary)
>>> and then have an additional layer of axioms that establishes
>>> alignments. Many companies will (or do) it this way anyway
>>> because they are afraid of giving up control. Will there be a >>
>>> FOAF in 5 years from now?
>
> Indeed, I strongly second Jano's statement here. Agreement on one
> (common) world view will never be reached - and is not really
> desirable. Many communities use semantic approaches, and their
> contexts and needs are different. Consequently, resulting ontologies
> might contradict each other (in parts), which makes full integration
> impossible. However, using common patterns and establishing
> alignments is a realistic solution to connect communities and
> enabling information exchange. We are on a good way!
>
> Maximizing re-use certainly is a valuable principle, but practice
> shows us that many groups favor new developments instead of (often
> more expensive) investigation for and adoption of existing bits and
> pieces. Whilst promoting re-sue, we cannot ignore such practices.
>
> Best, Sven
>

-- 
Prof. Dr. Pascal Hitzler
Dept. of Computer Science, Wright State University, Dayton, OH
pascal@pascal-hitzler.de   http://www.pascal-hitzler.de
Semantic Web Textbook: http://www.semantic-web-book.org
Semantic Web Journal: http://www.semantic-web-journal.net

Received on Friday, 10 January 2014 13:28:00 UTC