Re: looking for an event ontology/vocabulary

>>> Indeed. However, it suffers from one glaring defect, which may simply be a
>>> problem of documentation: i does not explain its terms. In particular, it
>>> refers to a 'factor' of an event, without anywhere saying anything, either
>>> in the axioms or in the documentation, to explain what this strange term is
>>> supposed to mean. It is not normal English usage to refer to a 'factor' of
>>> an event, so ordinary English usage is no guide. The documentation at
>>> http://motools.sourceforge.net/event/event.html#term_Factor
>>> says  an event:Factor is 'everything used as a factor in an event', which is
>>> completely useless as it provides no explanatory information whatsoever. If
>>> an explanation of event:Foodle was that it described all the foodles of an
>>> event, that would be similarly useless as documentation. Can you say WHAT
>>> YOU MEAN by a 'factor'? If that is too much to ask, can you give some
>>> EXAMPLES both of factors and of non-factors of an event?
>>
>> Wow. No need to shout!!!!
>>
>> Anyway, yes, the documentation is not particularly good, for the only
>> reason that most people got it from the examples (which is apparently
>> wrong or not enough, then?)
>
> How would you know if they didn't? Is there anything you could write
> that a reasoner could use to detect that a mistake had been made?
>
>>  and so we didn't got the incentive to
>> write a better one. Among those examples, you have:
>>
>> * A score in a musical performance
>> * A musical instrument in a musical performance
>> * A piece of text in a reading
>> * A microphone in a recording
>
> A chair in the room? The door to leave? The program handed out to the
> audience? The audience? The light bulb illuminating the room? The food
> that audience ate while watching? The videotape that was being used to
> record the performance? The city in which the performance took place?
>

...
Among all that, are you really convinced you don't know what to
declare as a foaf:Agent or a place? And hence what to define as a
factor? Sorry, but I *really* think you're splitting hair now. I can
understand the argument against the documentation, but that?

In case that's useful:

chair --> factor
programme --> factor
a person in the audience --> agent
light bulb --> factor
food --> factor
videotape -->factor
city --> place

>> The disjoint statement between agent and factor defines factors as
>> something that doesn't have an active role in the event. Sorry it
>> isn't reflected in the html doc (yes, my small specgen script doesn't
>> capture everything).
>
> Does a piano being played take an active role? Does the amplifier that
> amplifies the sounds and the speakers that are used take an active
> part? Can only people take active parts? How can I determine the
> difference between active and inactive?

piano --> factor
amplifier --> factor
person --> agent

>
>> Also, we are perfectly open for improvements, so if you have any
>> suggestions for improvement or better description of terms, feel free.
>> There is even an open SVN (motools project on Sourceforge, in the
>> event subdirectory), where you can directly commit stuff.
>
> My suggestion would be to follow the pointers I gave and get some
> ideas about how people who have thought more deeply about such issues
> approach the problem.

Arg... Sorry, we didn't think deeply about that, of course. You may
disagree about that ontology and not use it (and that's fine! no,
really!), but don't throw the "you didn't think enough" argument,
please. We spent a long time designing it, and spent a long time
figuring out what the right trade-off between usability and
expressibility was for such a generic ontology. You should at least
respect that we decided to share what we came out with.

If you have arguments, please give them (perhaps offline, as that
doesn't really belong to that mailing list), but I don't buy that, and
that makes me really suspicious about your other criticisms.

>
>> There are also a bit more details in my thesis.
>
> Pointer?

http://moustaki.org/phd/

y

Received on Wednesday, 29 July 2009 20:58:22 UTC