Re: [semanticweb] Ontology of interests

On 25/07/06, Knud Hinnerk Möller <knud.moeller@deri.org> wrote:

> * in the foaf:interest example the wikipedia URL obviously identifies the
> page, as Damian pointed out, but then you'd still need to say what the
> foaf:topic of the page is, because if we have
>    * Danny foaf:interest
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework>
> .    and
>    * Knud foaf:interest <http://www.w3.org/RDF/> .

Presumably you can strongly encourage people (e.g. in the FOAF docs; I
haven't looked) to prefer pages from e.g. Wikipedia over some
arbitrary even if apparently canonical page. If the page isn't there,
add it.

> * then how could anyone (without a human brain) know that we are both
> interested in RDF? This could only be inferred if we also say:
>    *
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework>
> foaf:topic <nice.uri.for.RDF> .    and
>    * <http://www.w3.org/RDF/> foaf:topic <nice.uri.for.RDF> .

Besides, what's wrong with saying, without using another URI:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework> foaf:topic _:rdf .
<http://www.w3.org/RDF/> foaf:topic _:rdf .

?

Another concern is the drift in meaning of assertions you'll get using
something like Wikipedia to provide a "controlled" vocabulary. When I
assert

_:me foaf:interest <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...> .

I really mean I have an interest which is described by that page at
the time the assertion was made.

Probably not such an issue in geek space with well defined technologies.

Hamish

-- 
Hamish Harvey
Research Associate, School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences,
Newcastle University