RE: [SKOS]: [ISSUE 44] BroaderNarrowerSemantics

Ok seems also reasonable to me to allow users to define transitivity....

-----Original Message-----
From: public-swd-wg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-swd-wg-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Ed Summers
Sent: 17 December 2007 19:25
To: public-swd-wg@w3.org; public-esw-thes@w3.org
Subject: Re: [SKOS]: [ISSUE 44] BroaderNarrowerSemantics



Thanks to all for this gentle schooling in how important the broader/narrower
transitivity issue is--especially for the Library of Congress Subject
Headings. I must admit, I had no idea that the broader/narrower semantics in
LCSH were this flawed, and recognized as such even when they were first
introduced in 1988 [1]. I suppose if the semantics around broader/narrower
were declared to be transitive the SKOS representation of LCSH would simply
be making explicit this implicit brokenness. Who knows it could be a tool for
gradually improving LCSH along the lines that Margherita mentions...but the
problems seem quite endemic.

I'm curious though: what are the disadvantages of having SKOS say nothing
about broader/narrower transitivity, and letting users define these triples
if they are important for their application? This would allow looser KOS like
LCSH to be represented in roughly the same way as more rigorous KOS.
Developers who desired inferencing across broader/narrower could then add
triples stating that transitivity. Is the perception that this would
drastically reduce the interoperability of SKOS data, and if so how?

//Ed

[1] Dykstra, Mary. "LC Subject Headings Disguised as Thesaurus", Library
Journal, March 1, 1988, p 42-46.

Received on Monday, 17 December 2007 18:35:33 UTC