Re: SKOS for schema.org proposal for discussion

On 7 October 2013 21:04, Jarno van Driel <jarno@quantumspork.nl> wrote:
> Call me crazy, but I presume the folks who designed SKOS already had a
> discussion like this, isn't it therefore a bit strange to have the same
> discussion all over again. Looking at all the existing documentation (which
> refers to 'Concept') there is, wouldn't it make the general developer's life
> a lot easier if the naming stays the same?

I was one of those people, and the discussions go way back.
Collaboration around an RDF vocabulary for thesauri started ~1998.
Some old notes here
http://www.ilrt.bristol.ac.uk/publications/researchreport/rr1011/report_html?ilrtyear=00
though I remember discussing the issue of "when do we model hierarchy
as RDF types, and when broader/narrower?" with Traugott Koch at
http://www7.scu.edu.au/00/  and in the RDFS WG of the day. These and
other (e.g. http://www.w3.org/TandS/QL/QL98/pp/queryservice.html also
LIMBER project) experiments and implementations fed the later
SWAD-Europe project work
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/plan/workpackages/live/esw-wp-8.html
where we set up http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-esw-thes/
in 2003. Alistair Miles then did an fine job building a community
around the idea and turning vague ideas into a solid spec. Then two
successive W3C groups published SKOS first as a Note, then as a W3C
REC. A lot of work (e.g. see
http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/track/issues/
http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/requirements ) went into standardizing
SKOS. Nothing we do should be so careless as to give the impression
we're tearing things up and starting again.

The point of our current exercise is to combine SKOS's presence in the
public sector, Libraries/Archives/Museums/Galleries and thesaurus
world, with Schema.org's (and Drupal et al.'s...) presence in the
mainstream mass-market Web.

For that reason I find 'EnumConcept' a bit ugly but bearable. It
contains the word "Concept", tying it to the SKOS history and
documentation. And the word 'Enum' (for
http://schema.org/Enumeration), which has been part of schema.org's
model since the start.  So it somehow embody's the link between skos
and schema.org that we're trying to create. The fact that EnumConcept
is ugly can even work in its favour. One issue with types that have
'obvious' names is that people rarely feel compelled to consult their
documentation. For 'Person', that's probably just fine; but in this
case, a look at the documentation is probably rather useful.

> That way there are a lot of resources one can use, instead of yet another
> property which more or less does the same. In my opinion that would only add
> to the confusion.

Let's make sure to keep a strong link to SKOS terminology and
documentation, even if we don't call the class 'Concept'.

> On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 9:56 PM, Evain, Jean-Pierre <evain@ebu.ch> wrote:
>>
>> EnumConcept could pass.

>> From: Thad Guidry [mailto:thadguidry@gmail.com]
[...]
>> It does not HAVE to be called SkosConcept... but as long as the definition
>> shows it's origin and that Broader & Narrower among others, are part of the
>> bargain, then I think all web developers will easily comprehend what you
>> mean and what neat interconnections they can bring to expand knowledge and
>> organize directed Search queries even more.
>>
>> +1 for EnumConcept and I also saw the tie in to
>> http://schema.org/Enumeration  ( "Named" does not help signify that basic
>> "organization" feeling that SKOS is all about....Knowledge Organization....
>> but Enumeration or Enum does.)
>>
>> -Thad

Can anyone here _not_ live with EnumConcept, given the various
constraints and viewpoints expressed so far?

Dan

Received on Monday, 7 October 2013 21:23:18 UTC