Re: comment: Re: [ALL,VM] Vocabulary Management Task Force Description - discussion draft

On Sat, Jun 12, 2004 at 06:53:31PM +0200, Danny Ayers wrote:
> [[
> The goal of this Task Force is to describe best practice for declaring 
> and managing terms and term sets (vocabularies) for use in a Semantic 
> Web environment.
> ]]
> 
> One of the first questions a vocabulary author is likely to ask when 
> considering how to declare a term is "rdfs:Class or owl:Class", or to 
> put it another way, "shall I use OWL Full (RDF+S), DL or Lite?"
> 
> I was wondering whether this question will be in scope for [VM], and if 
> not, how on earth will you avoid it?

My preference would be for the VM note to focus on
_identifying_ terms and term sets in a SW-friendly way.

With regard to declaring (i.e., formally publishing)
a vocabulary, I see two sets of issues:

-- The attributes of a term (such as Definition, Name,
   Comment, etc...).  I listed this as probably "out of
   scope" for the VM draft because the issue feels too big
   for a little note.  Or if the VM note were to address this,
   perhaps then only in the form of minimal guidelines (i.e.,
   "provide a definition").

-- Documenting terms: I think of this issue as in scope
   inasmuch we should summarize the state of discussion about
   whether a URI resolves to anything at all, and if so,
   whether to a Web page, a schema (of whatever flavor),
   or a resource directory.

   If best practice on this has yet to emerge in the wider
   community, the VM note should perhaps do no more (or no
   less) than summarize and critically discuss the range of
   possibilities, pointing to an example of each.

> I realise 'cleaning up the mess' has been put on hold as far as [WRLD] 
> is concerned [1], but there is no need for anyone to commit to advice 
> pointing towards any (sub-)language exclusively. However there should be 
> information available on the implications of any choice based on known 
> facts. 

Yes.

>        The mess won't clean itself up, quite the opposite if people are 
> implementing without at least some knowledge of the relative 
> strengths/merits of the alternatives.

In light of the above, the objective of the note should
perhaps be changed (s/declaring/identifying/):

    The goal of this Task Force is to describe best practice
    for IDENTIFYING and managing terms and term sets
    (vocabularies) for use in a Semantic Web environment.

Tom

-- 
Dr. Thomas Baker                        Thomas.Baker@izb.fraunhofer.de
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Personal email: thbaker79@alumni.amherst.edu

Received on Sunday, 13 June 2004 04:11:37 UTC