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

John,

Thank you for the information about Instance Markup Language.

Ontology for describing and interrelating facts or claims in documents across the Web are of interest. Some preliminary ideas for describing facts or claims include: (a) does the fact have metadata such as contributors and creation date, (b) is the provenance or inference/proof of the fact available in the document or referenced resource, (c) is the fact asserted or retracted, (d) is the fact superseded by another fact. Some preliminary ideas for interrelating facts or claims, or sets thereof, include those relations from logic, mathematics, reasoning, and argumentation.

Some preliminary ideas for representing facts or claims in HTML documents include: (1) new markup elements (e.g. <fact> or <claim>), (2) text fragments (https://wicg.github.io/scroll-to-text-fragment/), (3) uses of standardized class names (e.g. <span class="w3c-fact">), (4) uses of the role attribute (e.g. <span role="fact">), (5) uses of custom elements (e.g. <fact-span>), (6) uses of Web schema (see: schema.org), (7) uses of RDFa or similar technologies, (8) uses of embedding semantics in HTML documents via <script> elements to indicate which URI-addressable document elements are facts or claims.

With respect to browser features or extensions which adorn facts and claims, systems of visual indicators include: collections of informative messages, warnings, and errors (see: computer programming IDE’s) as well as uses of colorful graphics symbols (such as green checkmarks, yellow warnings, and red errors (see also: Lurch [2])). There may be yet other, perhaps more intricate, models or systems for visual indicators on facts or claims.

These informative, warning, and error messages and/or colorful symbols could provide hyperlinks to user experiences, resources which list sets of interrelated facts or claims from across documents.

Interestingly, we can also consider document authoring scenarios using these epistemological visual indicators and utilizing the same type of backend services. This might resemble Lurch [1][2] – a mathematical word processor that checks the reasoning in users’ documents – but with enhanced natural language processing capabilities for facts, claims, reasoning, and argumentation. That is, while authoring documents, authors could see how their documents would render for readers using the browser features or extensions under discussion.

Towards inspiring interest in these topics, a concrete example: <fact id="fact-123">Anthropogenic climate change is real.</fact> occurring in a webpage could be adorned with visual indicators by a Web browser, a green checkmark, or, if a backend service reports that fact or claim as contested, a yellow warning symbol which hyperlinks to a user experience for exploring content in documents supporting and opposing that fact or claim.


Best regards,
Adam

[1] https://lurchmath.github.io/site/index.html
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVivAtsRRKM


From: John<mailto:jflynn12@verizon.net>
Sent: Saturday, January 9, 2021 11:54 AM
To: 'Adam Sobieski'<mailto:adamsobieski@hotmail.com>; semantic-web@w3.org<mailto:semantic-web@w3.org>
Cc: jflynn12@verizon.net<mailto:jflynn12@verizon.net>
Subject: 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