- From: Bob Morris <morris.bob@gmail.com>
- Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2013 22:56:34 -0500
- To: Paolo Ciccarese <paolo.ciccarese@gmail.com>
- Cc: Antoine Isaac <aisaac@few.vu.nl>, public-openannotation <public-openannotation@w3.org>
Some of this discussion reminds me of disputes about writing (in English) in the passive vs the active voice. See [1] for a recent charming exposition, arguing that the occasional use of the passive voice is unavoidable. But Nature wants authors to write in the active voice as it is easier to sort out the relations between the agents of experiments and the experiments. [2]. I think the current model is analogous (identical?) to the active voice and prefer it on those grounds. But perhaps more important, I feel that unlike for natural language, knowledge representation for machines should offer only one direction in the serialization. It should not require a human to determine from the content of an annotation whether the Target is about the Body or vice versa. (Ditto for any relation that could substitute for "about." Bob Morris [1]. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/30/the-pleasures-and-perils-of-the-passive/ [2]http://www.nature.com/authors/author_resources/how_write.html On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 6:43 PM, Paolo Ciccarese <paolo.ciccarese@gmail.com> wrote: > > > On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 6:01 PM, Antoine Isaac <aisaac@few.vu.nl> wrote: >> >> Hi Stian, Paolo, >> >> I agree the directionality is a useful notion to keep. But if it's at the >> cost of having such a statement as >> >> :ann1 a oa:Annotation ; >> oa:hasBody >> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States> ; >> oa:hasTarget <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Bill_Clinton> . >> for representing that someone tagged the wikipedia page with the resource >> representing Bill Clinton, then we're doomed! > > > Just to be clear, I've never proposed to do that. I don't think it is > feasible. That is why in Annotation Ontology we had two different > relationships one for the classic body (and aboutness) and one for tags. > >> >> >> This is indeed really counter-intuitive. To me the "tag" or "subject" (it >> could be a SKOS concept, a test-as-body, whatever) is the thing that >> annotates, not the thing that is annotated (NB: in fact while reading the >> previous versions of the spec, I had understood oa:semanticTag was playing >> the same functional role as oa:hasBody; I realize now I might have missed a >> big part of the motivation for keeping them separate then!) > > > I think the process of annotating has a target and a body. The body is what > the user attaches to the target. The interpretation of the value of > 'attaching' varies. And we cannot force that direction for everything. In > other words, it is a matter of defining better the annotation (or the > annotation process). We have a new proposal that will be shared as soon as > it is polished. > >> >> We really should focus on the functional side of things. Maybe the problem >> with "about" is that it's too much loaded with intuitive semantics that have >> in the end only little to do with the technical aspect of annotation. We >> should rather aim at finding a word that expresses a function (which carries >> directionality indeed). > > > That is what Rob and I discussed yesterday while revising the draft and we > think we have a decent solution for that. > > Allow us a few more hours. > Paolo > > > > >> On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 5:05 PM, Paolo Ciccarese >> <paolo.ciccarese@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>>> So unless there's a strong motivation I'm overlooking, I'd recommend a >>>> more neutral expression like "the body relates with the target". >>>> Granted, >>>> it's less informative, but at least it's not dangerous. >>> >>> We had a discussion about this point while writing this version of the >>> spec. >>> I am ok with having 'related' replacing 'about'. The terms are both >>> generic >>> but 'relates' does not imply the directionality. >>> Given the example you provided I don't see alternatives. >> >> >> I have always liked the "is somewhat about" definition. It has an >> implied directionality, which for most cases makes it easier to >> determine what is body and what is target. >> >> This is something I always found odd in the AO specification, where >> one had ao:annotatesResource, ao:body and ao:hasTopic - but it was >> there in particular to keep this distinction - classification would >> use hasTopic instead. >> >> >> My considerations back then in >> >> http://www.wf4ever-project.org/wiki/display/docs/2011-09-26+Annotation+model+considerations#2011-09-26Annotationmodelconsiderations-AnnotationOntology%28AO%29 >> >>> From this example above (using aot:Qualifier) one could strictly argue >>> that for our annotation bodies, AO should be applied 'opposite' to how we >>> used OAC, as the annotation bodies have the aggregated resources as their >>> topics. We feel that this is somewhat counter-intuitive, as our motivation >>> was to find a mechanism for attaching rich descriptions to aggregated >>> resources. However, AO encourages specialisation through subclassing >>> ao:Annotation, for instance an aot:Note relates an ann:body as a free-text >>> note describing (a sub-selection of) the annotated document. >> >> >> >> >> With "relates to" it gets quite blurry. I think the classification >> example is the odd one out - and we have argued earlier to use >> something like oa:semanticTag instead of oa:hasBody for that purpose. >> >> >> So if Antoine case is "someone tags a web page with its subject", that is >> not classification, perhaps it is identification. >> >> I would, if I follow the current draft strictly, do this as: >> >> >> :ann1 a oa:Annotation ; >> >> oa:hasBody<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States> >> ; >> oa:hasTarget<http://dbpedia.org/resource/Bill_Clinton> . >> >> >> And even for pictures: >> >> :ann2 a oa:Annotation ; >> oa:hasBody<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bush_and_Clinton.jpg> ; >> oa:hasTarget<http://dbpedia.org/resource/Bill_Clinton> . >> >> We can't say it the other way, because >> <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Bill_Clinton> is not (in this case) >> "somewhat about"<Bush_and_Clinton.jpg>. >> >> I know however this reads counter-intuitive - we feel that the >> annotator should be "annotating the jpeg" above - not "annotating the >> former president". We might above also do an annotation with both >> resources as oa:hasTarget and no body - but that does not say much, >> not without an appropriate motivation. >> >> >> With Antoine's "is related to" definition then this annotation could just >> as well been written both ways - so I'm not sure how this would help >> clarify the directionality, just open it for more confusion. >> >> >> It might also help if the appropriate motivations can help to relate >> the body and target, for instance oa:Classiciation does not state >> clearly where we can find the classification, and oa:Tagging how to >> find the tag. The use-case here is not classification, as >> <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Bill_Clinton> is not a classification >> type, but rather an Identification. >> >> > > > > > > > -- > Dr. Paolo Ciccarese > http://www.paolociccarese.info/ > Biomedical Informatics Research & Development > Instructor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School > Assistant in Neuroscience at Mass General Hospital > +1-857-366-1524 (mobile) +1-617-768-8744 (office) > > CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This message is intended only for the addressee(s), > may contain information that is considered > to be sensitive or confidential and may not be forwarded or disclosed to any > other party without the permission of the sender. > If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender > immediately. -- Robert A. Morris Emeritus Professor of Computer Science UMASS-Boston 100 Morrissey Blvd Boston, MA 02125-3390 IT Staff Filtered Push Project Harvard University Herbaria Harvard University email: morris.bob@gmail.com web: http://efg.cs.umb.edu/ web: http://etaxonomy.org/mw/FilteredPush http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram === The content of this communication is made entirely on my own behalf and in no way should be deemed to express official positions of The University of Massachusetts at Boston or Harvard University.
Received on Wednesday, 9 January 2013 03:57:02 UTC