Re: Should we adopt SKOS?

I would like to add at this point that I see schema.org first and foremost as an effort to provide ex ante schema alignment under a common, easily accessible umbrella, following a "schema alignment before data publication" paradigm.
This makes authoring markup easier (no namespace traversals) and reduces the complexity for consuming clients.

This having said, I would also rather suggest to import a pragmatic subset of SKOS into schema.org, in a fashion similar to the external enumerations pattern in use now and the additionalType property solution for external type systems.

An general open question is how we maintain the alignment of the original vocabularies (LRMI, GoodRelations, maybe SKOS, SIOC, ...) with their conceptually equivalent elements in schema.org.

In GoodRelations, we will simply try to keep both in sync manual, which seems reasonable given that the conceptual model is pretty stable.

In the long run, however, we will need to find a solution that combines the centralized schema.org approach with distributed contributions from various domains.

Maybe that is an interesting topic for a new schema.org workshop in 2013?

Best

Martin



On Jan 9, 2013, at 7:00 PM, Dan Brickley wrote:

> +Cc: Jamie
> 
> On 9 January 2013 16:29, Richard Wallis <richard.wallis@oclc.org> wrote:
>> Coming from the bibliographic world, specifically chairing  the Schema Bib
>> Extend Group[1] (who are building a consensus around a group of proposals
>> for Schema.org extensions for bibliographic resources, before submitting
>> them to this group), I am identifying situations where being able to model
>> things as SKOS[2] Concepts held in ConceptSchemes would make a great deal of
>> sense.
>> 
>> Working with colleagues we were finding ourselves almost reinventing the
>> SKOS model in [proposed] Schema.org vocabulary.
>> 
>> The introduction of External Enumerations[2] provided the ability to link to
>> lists of things controlled by external authorities.  An approach used widely
>> in the bibliographic and other domains – Library of Congress Subject
>> Headings[4] for example.  Many of these authorities are modelled using SKOS
>> (Concepts within ConceptSchemes) which introduces a consistent structured
>> way to describe relationships (broader/narrower), language specific
>> preferred labels, etc.
>> 
>> Sub-typing Intangible for Concept and ConceptScheme, it would be
>> comparatively easy to introduce SKOS into Schema.  The benefits I believe
>> being to add even more value to External Enumeration; providing a flexible
>> simple-ish yet standard pattern for marking up lists of concepts and their
>> interrelationships; provide a very easy way for already published
>> authoritative lists of concepts to adopt Schema.org and provide valuable
>> resources for all to connect with.
>> 
>> For instance VIAF[4] the Virtual International Authority File, a well used
>> source of URIs and authoritative names for people and organisations
>> (compiled and managed by the bibliographic community but used widely) is
>> already in SKOS.  SKOS is also used in many other domains.
>> 
>> I could see this adding value without significant impact on the rest of
>> Schema.
>> 
>> What do others think?
> 
> I've been thinking in this direction too (and had brief discussion
> with Jamie, cc:'d, w.r.t. Freebase's approach).
> 
> SKOS has done well and a great many controlled vocabularies in the
> thesauri, subject classification and code list tradition are expressed
> using it. SKOS handles various cases where 'class/object/property'
> models don't capture things well. I'd like to have a way of reflecting
> SKOS-oriented data into schema.org descriptions without going
> 'multi-namespace'. There are also already various corners of
> schema.org where different loose notions of 'category' are slipping
> in.
> 
> My current preference would be to call a new type "Topic" or perhaps
> "Category" rather than the more esoteric / vague "Concept", even while
> borrowing most structure and terminology from SKOS.
> 
> Do you have a strawman list of what you'd hope to include, from a
> bibliographic perspective?
> 
> Dan
> 
>> ~Richard
>> 
>> --
>> Richard Wallis
>> Technology Evangelist
>> OCLC
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> [1] http://www.w3.org/community/schemabibex/
>> [2] http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference/
>> [3] http://www.w3.org/wiki/WebSchemas/ExternalEnumerations
>> [4] http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects.html
>> 
> 

--------------------------------------------------------
martin hepp
e-business & web science research group
universitaet der bundeswehr muenchen

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Received on Wednesday, 9 January 2013 18:28:48 UTC