Re: [semanticweb] Ontology of interests

Am 25.07.2006 um 10:23 schrieb Damian Steer:

>> I know this brings up the old "URI crisis"-question (to which I don't
>> really have an answer), but what exactly does the statement above  
>> mean:
>>
>> 1.) Damian is interested in RDF
>> 2.) Damian is interested in the Wikipedia page about RDF
>> 3.) both
>
> Ah, should have made this explicit. It's #1.
>
> foaf:interest roughly says: I'm interested in whatever this page is
> about. It doesn't say 'I'm interested in this page', although that  
> might
> well be true, too.

Ok, you're right here, the FOAF spec actually makes it explicit that  
if you have ...

* <PERSON foaf:interest DOCUMENT>
* <DOCUMENT foaf:topic TOPIC>

... S is not interested in DOCUMENT, but in TOPIC. So, to make this  
work with Wikipedia in the way I understand it from the FOAF spec,  
you would have to give each Wikipedia page a topic. :-)

> The idea is to facilitate convergence using existing web pages.  
> Making a
> global interest taxonomy or ontology is hard and pretty  
> unrewarding, but
> people will create web pages about their interests. And we're more
> likely to find them and hence converge on interests.

Yes, and I like the idea of using Wikipedia for that purpose. Only,  
it doesn't seem to work as smoothly as I wish it would (see above).

> Of course not all pages are suitable. Consider 'Harry Potter': the top
> hit is J K Rowling's site, but that's really about the author not the
> character, although clearly the character is what leads the search to
> that page. And what's the BBC news page about?

Yep, and that's why and additional foaf:topic statement seems to be  
necessary.

Cheers,
Knud

-------------------------------------------------
Knud Möller, MA
+353 - 91 - 495086
Digital Enterprise Research Institute
   National University of Ireland, Galway
Institiúid Taighde na Fiontraíochta Digití
   Ollscoil na hÉireann, Gaillimh