Re: [Dbpedia-discussion] [Dbpedia-ontology] Advancing the DBpedia ontology

Hi,

> My counsel is to not let DBpedia's mission stray into questions of 
> conceptual "truth". Keep the ontology flat and simple with no 
> aspirations other than "just the facts, ma'am". 

I would not necessarily state it this way as the quality and the 
expressibility of a large ontology such as the DBpedia ontology are key, 
but I share your feeling about keeping this an information science 
ontology instead of a philosophical ontology that aims at answering 
questions about what exists in 'reality'. Information science ontologies 
should aim at making these differences explicit, not at defining 
'truth'. I would also be very careful not to develop this into any sort 
of 'top-level' ontology or use a pre-fixed alignment to a particular 
ontology. Generally, I hope a new DBpedia ontology would be following 
the principle of minimal ontological commitments and may be even 
developed based on ontology design patterns.

Best,
Krzysztof



On 02/25/2015 09:19 PM, Mike Bergman wrote:
> Hi John,
>
> My thoughts are for DBpedia to stay close to the mission of extracting 
> quality data from Wikipedia, and no more. That quality extraction is 
> an essential grease to the linked data ecosystem, and of much major 
> benefit to anyone needful of broadly useful structured data.
>
> I think both Wikipedia and DBpedia have shown that crowdsourced entity 
> information and data works beautifully, but the ontologies or 
> knowledge graphs (category structures) that emerge from these effort 
> are mush.
>
> DBpedia, or schema.org from that standpoint, should not be concerned 
> so much about coherent schema, computable knowledge graphs, 
> ontological defensibility, or any such T-Box considerations. They have 
> demonstrably shown themselves to not be strong in these suits.
>
> No one hears the term "folksonomy" any more because all initial 
> admirers have seen no crowd-sourced schema to really work (from dmoz 
> to Freebase). A schema is not something to be universally consented, 
> but a framework by which to understand a given domain. Yet the 
> conundrum is, to organize anything globally, some form of conceptual 
> agreement about a top-level schema is required.
>
> Look to what DBpedia now does strongly: extract vetted structured data 
> from Wikipedia for broader consumption on the Web of data.
>
> My counsel is to not let DBpedia's mission stray into questions of 
> conceptual "truth". Keep the ontology flat and simple with no 
> aspirations other than "just the facts, ma'am".
>
> Thanks, Mike
>
> On 2/25/2015 10:33 PM, M. Aaron Bossert wrote:
>> John,
>>
>> You make a good point...but are we talking about a complete tear-down 
>> of the existing ontology?  I'm not necessarily opposed to that 
>> notion, by want to make sure that we are all in agreement as to the 
>> scope of work, as it were.
>>
>> What would be the implications of a complete redo?  Would the benefit 
>> outweigh the impact to the community?  I would assume that there 
>> would be a ripple effect across all other LOD datasets that map to 
>> dbpedia, correct?  Or am I grossly overstating/misunderstanding how 
>> interconnected the ontology is?
>>
>> Vladimir, your thoughts?
>>
>> Aaron
>>
>>> On Feb 25, 2015, at 21:14, John Flynn <jflynn12@verizon.net> wrote:
>>>
>>> It seems the first level effort should be a requirements analysis 
>>> for the
>>> Dbpedia ontology.
>>> - What is the level of expressiveness needed in the ontology 
>>> language- 1st
>>> order logic, some level of descriptive logic, or a less expressive 
>>> language?
>>> - Based on the above, what specific ontology implementation language 
>>> should
>>> be used?
>>> - Should the Dbpedia ontology leverage an existing upper ontology, 
>>> such as
>>> SUMO, DOLCE, etc?
>>> - Should the Dbpedia ontology architecture consist of a basic common 
>>> core of
>>> concepts (possibly in addition to the concepts in a upper ontology) 
>>> that are
>>> then extended by additional domain ontologies?
>>> - How will the Dbpedia ontology be managed?
>>> - What are the hosting requirements for access loads on the 
>>> ontology? How
>>> many simultaneous users?
>>>
>>> This is only a cursory cut at Dbpedia ontology requirement issues. 
>>> But, it
>>> seems the community needs to come to grips with this issue before
>>> implementing specific changes to the existing ontology.
>>>
>>> John Flynn
>>> http://semanticsimulations.com
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: M. Aaron Bossert [mailto:mabossert@gmail.com]
>>> Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2015 9:13 AM
>>> To: <vladimir.alexiev@ontotext.com>
>>> Cc: dbpedia-ontology; Linked Data community; SW-forum;
>>> <dbpedia-discussion@lists.sourceforge.net>
>>> Subject: Re: [Dbpedia-ontology] [Dbpedia-discussion] Advancing the 
>>> DBpedia
>>> ontology
>>>
>>> Vladimir,
>>>
>>> I'm thinking of trying to do some stats on the existing ontology and 
>>> the
>>> mappings to see where there is room for improvement.  I'm tied up 
>>> this week
>>> with a couple deadlines that I seem to moving towards at greater 
>>> than light
>>> speed, though my progress is not.
>>>
>>> As soon as I get the rough cut done, I'll share the results with you 
>>> and
>>> maybe we can discuss paths forward?
>>>
>>> I'm with you on the 30% error rate...that doesn't help anyone.
>>>
>>> Aaron
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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>>
>
>
>


-- 
Krzysztof Janowicz

Geography Department, University of California, Santa Barbara
4830 Ellison Hall, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4060

Email: jano@geog.ucsb.edu
Webpage: http://geog.ucsb.edu/~jano/
Semantic Web Journal: http://www.semantic-web-journal.net

Received on Monday, 2 March 2015 02:26:09 UTC