- From: Hugh Glaser <hugh@glasers.org>
- Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2025 12:58:58 +0000
- To: semantic-web@w3.org
Just a few observations from someone who rarely if ever uses OWL, other than sameAs & differentFrom :-) I like you raising the issue, especially at this time. The example is personally offensive to some people, which is horrible. There are actually documents that refer to this example, so changing it is not a good thing. No non-trivial example will be without similar problems - although examples such as Pizza are clearly less sensitive issues. I actually have used this example to explore and illustrate the problems of modelling, especially the restrictions that people love to use. (Caveat - I have never studied knowledge modelling, so this is a lay view). The truth is that classes and especially restrictions etc. will usually impose authors' world views. And given the complexities of the world, any non-trivial example is unlikely to have universal agreement. Clearly you couldn't say that every face has a nose, for example. Or are all pizzas either deep pan or thin and crispy; what is a calzone. (No, I don't want to actually know. :-) ) That is why proper ontology building is so hard and time-consuming (and I avoid it!) In fact, the OWL example referred to with only two genders possibly captures perfectly what some authors would create right now, even though others will find it unacceptable. So, if you want to have other examples, as Dan says, create them somewhere and link to them with explanation from the document. You might even find it hard enough to get agreement on the wording of any explanation! I would love to see a more inclusive version of the example from the Primer. It would be a great thing to have, and have a link from the Primer to it. "For a more inclusive version of the example used in this document, see..." I hope changing things even a little doesn't get any federal funding of important activities into trouble. Oh, so that's a +1 to Dan. Cheers Hugh >> On 17 Mar 2025, at 12:14, Dan Brickley <danbri@danbri.org> wrote: >> >> >> On Mon, Mar 17, 2025 at 11:35 Chaals Nevile <chaals@fastmail.fm> wrote: >> Actually, since changing the examples would be a completely editorial change, although it is more than correcting a typo there is no real barrier to doing it, beyond the fact that it needs a little bit of work. >> >> To be honest, not everyone does like pizza, but it's a reasonable example to use because most people who are going to use OWL know enough about pizzas to find the examples relatable. >> >> While it is indeed important to work on new recommendations, it seems reasonable to update the old examples too, and it shouldn't be hard to find someone who considers doing that a reasonable use of their time and capabilities. I'll nominate myself as one such person... >> >> > A cheaper fix might be to add a line saying the status of the examples is that they look a bit dated/hackneyed and point to somewhere (wiki, github etc.) where more varied and diverse living collection of examples can be found. >> >> Dan >> >> cheers >> >> >> On Monday, 17 March 2025 10:38:15 (+01:00), Marco Neumann wrote: >> >> Blessed be the fruit, >> this has been an issue since the beginning of RDF modelling examples in the late 1990s. These W3C documents can be seen as a record in time, and updating them is not an option as they are constituent parts of the existing W3C recommendation. >> >> The best approach would be to create a new document that supersedes the status quo of the respective recommendation. eg new standards, I highly recommend help working on new recommendations and their supporting documentation like RDF 1.2 and SPARQL 1.2- >> >> Best, >> Marco >> >> >> >> On Mon, Mar 17, 2025 at 8:25 AM Chris Mungall <cmungall@gmail.com> wrote: >> Hi Harshvardhan, >> >> Seems like a good idea, but I am not sure how easy it is to update W3C recommendations. >> >> This is perhaps a good time to mention that one of the most widely used ontologies for clinical and cancer research in the US used to have good modeling of gender concepts. However, in the latest release of the ontology from last week, OWL classes relating to gender have been deprecated or tagged, in compliance with US Executive Order 14168, see https://genomic.social/@Cmungall/114152616246522594. >> >> While there are certainly more terrible things happening right now, this is a chilling demonstration of the far-reaching effects of the current administration's actions. > -- Hugh +44 7595 334155
Received on Monday, 17 March 2025 12:59:27 UTC