[SKOS] Comments on SKOS Reference

Some nitty-gritty comments on SKOS Reference, 25 January [1]:

In the Abstract

-- One would not refer to "the SKOS", so I would suggest 
   consistently not using "the", i.e. "This document defines Simple..."

-- "a common data model"
   
   Does this mean "commonly used", "everyday-sort-of", or 
   "shared"?  Maybe just delete "common".

-- "to enable data and technology sharing"
   
   What is "technology sharing" (beyond "data sharing")?
   Maybe just delete "technology sharing".

-- s/light weight/light-weight/

-- s/Web Ontology language/Web Ontology Language/

-- Some superfluous commas:
   s/share a similar structure,/share a similar structure/
   s/on its own,/on its own/

In the Synopsis

-- "Using SKOS, conceptual resources..."

   The Primer refers to "conceptual resources (concepts)".

   My preference would be for both documents to refer
   consistently just to concepts; or _maybe_ add "(conceptual
   resources)" in brackets.  For one thing, the URI is
   skos:Concept, not skos:ConceptualResource.  There is also a
   slight inconsistency now between the Primer section heading
   "2.1 Concepts" and the SKOS Reference section heading
   "3. Conceptual resources".

   With "conceptual resource", I see a potential confusion
   with "concept schemes" -- "resources" that are conceptual
   in nature.  In this RDF context, of course, everything is
   a resource, but that point can be made in other ways.

   Hence also: s/conceptual resources can be grouped/concepts can be grouped/, etc

-- In 1.1 Background:

   s/each of these families shares much/these families share much/

-- In 1.1 Background:

   "meaning that complements and gives structure to information
   already present in the Web".

   I find this formulation slightly confusing as a message -
   it could be simply deleted.  Otherwise, _maybe_ expand slightly
   to clarifymake more explicit:

   "meaning that gives formal expression and structure
   to information that may be present in Web content in
   computationally less reusable ways."

-- In 1.1 Background:

   s/They go a long way/These knowledge representation languages go a long way/

-- 1.2. What is SKOS?

   The word "machine-readable" keeps coming up.  Is this
   currently accepted as a synonym for "machine-processable"?
   I had always understood the difference as being that
   _everything_ is "machine-readable" -- an MS-Word file is
   machine-readable -- but that "machine-processable" was the
   term for being able to process encoded semantics.  How are
   SWEO and Semantic Web Activity using "machine-readable"
   these days?

-- 1.3. SKOS, RDF, and OWL

   "However, it is _not_ appropriate to express..."

   It seems more precise to say:

   "However, it is _not_ appropriate to mechanically translate..."

Tom

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-skos-reference-20080125/

-- 
Tom Baker - tbaker@tbaker.de - baker@sub.uni-goettingen.de

Received on Tuesday, 12 February 2008 13:23:47 UTC