Re: ANN: The Vehicle Sales Ontology - Cars, Bikes, Boats on the Web of Data - http://purl.org/vso/ns

Hi Michael,
Thanks for the feedback! I chose to consider Kayaks as a special kind  
of watercraft in order to exclude them from the domain of all  
properties associated with having a motor, because to my knowledge,  
kayaks are extremely rarely powered by an engine (other than e.g.  
canoes, which occasionally have small electric or combustion engines).

By simply also making kayak a subclass of boat, one would recommend  
(*) a lot of properties that 99.9% of the kayaks in the world don't  
have (engine displacement etc.), which will irritate potential adopters.

Otherwise, I would have needed rather "ontology expert" classes like  
"motorizableWaterVehicle" etc. This would also require complex class  
definitions for the range / domain definitions, which cause practical  
problems in many pure RDF and RDFS environments (e.g. resolving  
unionOf without an OWL reasoner is a pain for developers).

So it was really just a decision for bringing order to the domains and  
ranges of typical properties.

I hope this modeling compromise is acceptable for all kayakers in the  
world.

Martin

(*) I am well aware of the specific semantics of rdfs:range and  
rdfs:domain ;-)
(**) I know that you know that I am not saying that a kayak is not a  
boat but just that a kayak does not always need to be a regular boat  
for everybody ;-)

On 30.08.2010, at 20:36, Michael F Uschold wrote:

> Overall this ontology is just fine, highly suitable for its intended  
> purpose.  I do have one [hopefully] minor concern. Why is a kayak  
> not a kind of a boat? The classification in this ontology goes like  
> this:
> 	• Watercraft
> 		• Boat
> 		• Kayak
> 		• Ship
> The source of this (IHMO) mistake may be in the WIkipedia entry for  
> Watercraft:
>
> However, there are a number of craft which many people would  
> consider neither a ship nor a boat, such as:canoes, kayaks, rafts,  
> barges, catamarans, hydrofoils, windsurfers, surfboards (when used  
> as a paddle board), jet skis, underwater robots, seaplanes, and  
> torpedoes.
>
> Contradictorily, the opening words in the definition of kayak in  
> Wikipedia clearly state that a kayak is a boat:
> A kayak (sometimes generalised as a canoe) is a small human-powered  
> boat that traditionally has a covered deck, and one or more  
> cockpits, each seating one paddler who strokes a double-bladed paddle.
>
> I have been a kayaker for 35 years, and every kayaker I know thinks  
> and speaks of their kayak as a kind of boat. In the US, most  
> whitewater kayakers consider themselves boaters.
>
> What competency question justifies this classification?
> What is an example of a kayak that is categorically not a boat?
>
> Michael
>
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 10:22 AM, Martin Hepp <martin.hepp@ebusiness-unibw.org 
> > wrote:
> Dear all:
>
> I am happy to announce the first mature release of the Vehicle Sales  
> Ontology [1], a GoodRelations-compliant [2,3] Web vocabulary for
> - Cars,
> - Bikes,
> - Boats,
> - etc.
> on the Web of Data.
>
> It can be used by car listing sites, bike or canoe rental services  
> and the like.
>
> In combination with
>
> - http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1#owns and
> - http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1#seeks ,
>
> it is also possible to expose ownership ("I own a Volkswagen Golf")  
> as part of online identity data or purchasing interest ("I am  
> looking for a canoe").
>
> The ontology recommends DBPedia resource URIs as predefined  
> qualitative values as much as possible.
>
> Any feedback is very welcome.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Martin
> [1] http://purl.org/vso/ns
> [2] http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1
> [3] http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/Own_GoodRelations_Vocabularies
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> martin hepp
> e-mail:  mhepp@computer.org
> www:     http://www.heppnetz.de/
> skype:   mfhepp
> twitter: mfhepp
>
> Check out GoodRelations for E-Commerce on the Web of Linked Data!
> =================================================================
> * Project Main Page: http://purl.org/goodrelations/
> * Quickstart Guide for Developers: http://bit.ly/quickstart4gr
> * Vocabulary Reference: http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1
> * Developer's Wiki: http://www.ebusiness-unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations
> * Examples: http://bit.ly/cookbook4gr
> * Presentations: http://bit.ly/grtalks
> * Videos: http://bit.ly/grvideos
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Michael Uschold, PhD
>    LinkedIn: http://tr.im/limfu
>    Skype: UscholdM

Received on Tuesday, 31 August 2010 10:45:13 UTC