- From: Antoine Isaac <aisaac@few.vu.nl>
- Date: Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:58:30 +0100
- To: Richard Cyganiak <richard@cyganiak.de>
- CC: Peter DeVries <pete.devries@gmail.com>, public-lod@w3.org, dmozzherin@gmail.com
Hi Richard, > On 2 Dec 2009, at 16:36, Antoine Isaac wrote: >>> On 2 Dec 2009, at 02:40, Peter DeVries wrote: >>>> I was thinking that the species itself should be a class so that >>>> individuals >>>> of that species would be instances of that class. >>>> >>>> Probably another skos:Concept class. >>>> >>>> So an individual species concept class like that for the Cougar >>>> would be an >>>> instance of a skos:Concept (SpeciesConcept) class and also be a >>>> skos:Concept >>>> class (Cougar) of it's own. >>>> >>>> Individual animals would be instances of the skos:Concept class >>>> (Cougar). >>> Two issues. >>> 1. I don't think that individual animals should be typed as >>> skos:Concepts, but rather as something like ex:Specimen or ex:Animal. >>> So, the Cougar class should be a subclass of ex:Specimen or ex:Animal >>> rather than of skos:Concept. In the words of Bernard Vatant, >>> skos:Concepts are "library business objects" (or "taxonomist business >>> objects"?); Bob the cougar in the zoo next door doesn't seem to fit >>> that definition. >> >> Well, couldn't your questioning put the other way round? I thought >> that Peter was indeed starting from items that are very much >> "taxonomist business objects", hence very easy to represent as concepts. > > One simply has to be aware that skos:Concepts in a skos:ConceptScheme > are not the same as the real-world entities they stand for, and Peter > has to be clear which one he is talking about. +1 >> And in fact, while I understand that it is not very intuitive to have >> Bob the cougar as a skos:Concept (even though it is technically >> allowed), I see less problems for dealing this way with the class of >> cougars... > > Mentioning that you see less problems without going into any detail is > not exactly useful. I see more problems. Yes, I should have been clearer. In fact the most important argument (as I understand it from the discussion you started at [1]) against considering a given entity as a skos:Concept is that this entity may not have been designed as part as a knowledge organization endeavour. It is for example rather far-stretched to say that a person like Michelle Obama was conceived as part of a knowledge organization system. My point is that this is less problematic for classes, as these are items of a knowledge organization system from the start. They are also "taxonomist business objects", aren't they? So we could easily treat them as skos:Concepts. We have in fact touched this aspect in some parts of the SKOS documentation [2,3,4]. I'd be very interested to know whether you think this is wrong view! Best, Antoine [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-esw-thes/2009Nov/0000.html [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/NOTE-skos-primer-20090818/#secskosowl [3] http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference/#L896 [4] http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference/#L1170 > > > > >> >> Best, >> >> Antoine >> >>> 2. I'm not sure if it's wise to use the same URI for the Cougar >>> "concept" and the Cougar "class". I don't think that this "punning" >>> is against any spec, but it will cause endless head-scratching among >>> potential users of your data. It would be more straightforward to >>> mint a separate URI for the class, and relating it 1:1 to the species >>> concept using an appropriate property (there's probably one in UMBEL; >>> if not, mint your own -- maybe "speciesClass"). Since you own the URI >>> space anyway, minting new URIs would be cheap. >>> This kind of punning between concepts, things and classes is an >>> interesting issue, and I'm afraid that it's not yet well understood. >>> Avoiding it puts you on the safe side. >>> That being said, can you talk a bit about your motivation for wanting >>> to re-use the same URI? >>> Best, >>> Richard >>>> >>>> This should work with OWL2 but I don't know how well it will work >>>> with the >>>> LOD. >>>> >>>> Also I created a VERY preliminary OWL document that would contain a >>>> much >>>> more complete representation of the species. >>>> >>>> My thoughts are that these OWL documents would be used to help >>>> determine >>>> what specimens are instances of what species concept. >>>> The goal would be to provide an OWL document for those who need a more >>>> complete description of what we mean by the URI, while >>>> also providing a much lighter RDF representation that could be used for >>>> concept mapping etc. >>>> >>>> However, I don't know if I am going about this in the right way. >>>> >>>> Below are my VERY preliminary examples of what these OWL documents >>>> might >>>> look like. >>>> >>>> The example has some attributes that I thought should be included in a >>>> species document, but it does not have everything that would like to >>>> eventually include. >>>> >>>> http://rdf.taxonconcept.org/owlses/v6n7p/2009-12-01.owl >>>> >>>> Doc's at http://rdf.taxonconcept.org/owlses/v6n7p/owl_doc/index.html >>>> >>>> The common classes etc, would eventually be moved to a separate >>>> ontology >>>> that would be imported into each individual species ontology. >>>> >>>> And these ontologies will need to be fixed so that they work >>>> together, I >>>> don't think they do right now. >>>> >>>> Thanks in Advance, :-) >>>> >>>> - Pete >>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------- >>>> Pete DeVries >>>> Department of Entomology >>>> University of Wisconsin - Madison >>>> 445 Russell Laboratories >>>> 1630 Linden Drive >>>> Madison, WI 53706 >>>> GeoSpecies Knowledge Base >>>> About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base >>>> ------------------------------------------------------------ >> > >
Received on Thursday, 3 December 2009 18:59:06 UTC