RE: URI-addressable Facts and Claims and Ontologies to Describe and Interrelate Them

Adam,

 

I created something I called Instance Markup Language (IML) (1) back around
2003 that provided a concept for using HTML to markup specific instance data
on web page that would relate those instance data to specific ontologies.
The idea didn't catch on but I think it is related to what you are proposing
in your email. The basic idea is to allow web site developers using HTML to
mark up their web pages in a way that linked facts on their web page to
specific classes or properties in an ontology in order to provide sematic
meaning to their data.

 

1.
https://sites.google.com/site/semanticsimulations2/instance-markup-language

 

Respectfully,

John Flynn 

 

From: Adam Sobieski <adamsobieski@hotmail.com> 
Sent: Saturday, January 9, 2021 1:21 AM
To: semantic-web@w3.org
Subject: URI-addressable Facts and Claims and Ontologies to Describe and
Interrelate Them

 

W3C Semantic Web Interest Group,

 

I would like to propose, for purposes of discussion, a new HTML element for
facts or claims. With such markup, facts or claims in HTML documents
could/should have ID's so as to be URI-addressable (for examples:
https://www.news.org/article.html#fact-123 ,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/article#fact-123 ,
https://www.science.org/article.html#fact-123).

 

We can envision ontologies for describing and interrelating facts and
claims. Some pertinent topics are indicated here. Facts can be isomorphic
with one another which would typically mean that content in <fact> or
<claim> elements were paraphrases. Facts or claims may have attributes or
states; for example, facts can be asserted and later retracted. With respect
to ontologies of facts, sets of or groups of facts may be a type of thing to
be described and interrelated; for example, from a set of or group of facts
or claims, one can derive or infer other sets of or groups of facts or
claims. Facts or claims (and sets thereof) can agree with one another and
can disagree with one another.

 

A standard means of indicating facts or claims such that each fact or claim
were URI-addressable would facilitate a number of technologies in the public
interest. Such technologies include new ontologies, web-based services,
websites, software applications, content management system plugins and
extensions, and Web browser extensions. For instance, one can envision Web
browser extensions which provide features including visual indicators about
documents' individual facts or claims and which provide users with
fact-based document navigation, e.g. navigating from an individual fact or
claim to lists of documents which contain facts or claims which support or
oppose that fact or claim.

 

In addition to new HTML markup element(s), approaches for providing
URI-addressable facts and claims include, but are not limited to: (1) text
fragments (https://wicg.github.io/scroll-to-text-fragment/), (2) uses of
standardized class names (e.g. <span class="w3c-fact">), (3) uses of the
role attribute (e.g. <span role="fact">), (4) uses of custom elements (e.g.
<fact-span>), (5) uses of Web schema (see: schema.org), (6) uses of RDFa or
similar technologies, (7) uses of embedding semantics in HTML documents via
<script> elements to indicate which URI-addressable document elements are
facts or claims.

 

 

See also:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/facts/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology#Thing_ontologies_vs_fact_ontologies

 

 

Best regards,

Adam Sobieski