Re: Replace outdated social models in OWL2 primer

On Mon, Mar 17, 2025 at 15:29 Shaw, Ryan <ryanshaw@unc.edu> wrote:

> > Retroactively changing the content of archived, outdated, and now
> historical W3C recommendations raises even more questions than the ones
> caused by the choice of the examples in the first place.
>
>
> Actually this is a quite common task for librarians, archivists, and
> curators. Descriptions are inherently linked to historical context and
> there is need from time to time to update labels, descriptions, examples
> and other supporting information infrastructure.


See RADCAT mailing list for recent angst about this.


>
> Fortunately, there exists an ideal technology for retroactively revisiting
> and maintaining such infrastructure: RDF. Libraries, archives, and museums
> already use it for this purpose among others. RDF-star is particularly
> useful in this regard as it allows for annotating statements with
> additional context or justification.


There’s also the annotations spec, and named graphs especially in SPARQL.
But these don’t make the consequences of the changes invisible.

>
> Rather than reflexively pointing to rules and procedure [*] about
> immutable documents, it would be great to see the W3C rise to the challenge
> and demonstrate how we can have both a clear historical record and later
> changes to that record, all nicely documented using W3C technologies.


W3C’s new legal entity is a Delaware US Corporation

https://www.w3.org/2022/09/w3c-inc-faq

https://www.w3.org/2024/09/25-w3c-charter.pdf

“””The Corporation is organized and operated exclusively for exempt
purposes within the meaning of Section 501(c)(3) of the Code.
Notwithstanding any other provision of this Amended and Restated
Certificate of Incorporation (as the same may be amended and/or restated
from time to time, the “Certificate”), the Corporation shall not carry on
any activities not permitted to be carried on (1) by a corporation exempt
from federal income tax under Section 501(c)(3) of the Code, or (2) by a
corporation, contributions to which are deductible under Sections
170(c)(2), 2055(a)(2), 2106(a)(2)(A)(ii), 2522(a)(2), or 2522(b)(2) of the
Code. Except as permitted by law, no substantial part of the activities of
the Corporation shall consist of the carrying on of propaganda or otherwise
attempting to influence legislation, nor shall the Corporation participate
in, or intervene in (including the publication or distribution of
statements), any political campaign on behalf of or in opposition to any
candidate for public office.”””


My (IANAL etc.) reading of this and recent US events is that the new legal
entity’s tax status could be undermined if it were (however unfairly) to be
accused of propaganda and politicised campaigning. We know the new US govt
enjoy “owning the libs” in such a manner and it has already led to very
real job losses. [Skipping some details here.]

I don’t believe edited recommendations are understood by the wider w3c
community as a means for radically rewriting spec passages, and discourage
activities that might appear to set such a precedent. Let’s leave the past
as past and focus on setting better examples for the future.

Bluntly, OWL’s examples are cartoonishly simplistic because OWL DL is a
technology better suited to defining cartoonishly simplistic (and yet
complicated) rules. Examples work much better where the rules are
authoritatively *declared* rather than attempt to describe
social/linguistic nuances. So yup, Pizza Parlours, Cloud Platform ACLs
etc.; anywhere the OWL rules just are the rules.

Cheers,

Dan






>
> Ryan Shaw
>
> [*] Which will not save you in the end, as we in the US are learning.
>
> > On Mar 17, 2025, at 10:51 AM, Marco Neumann <marco.neumann@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Laura, et al it may be worthwhile to bring this up with the OWL Primer
> editors and explore the reasoning behind the decision to come up with these
> examples in 2012:
> >
> > Pascal Hitzler, Wright State University
> > Markus Krötzsch, University of Oxford
> > Bijan Parsia, University of Manchester
> > Peter F. Patel-Schneider, Nuance Communications
> > Sebastian Rudolph, FZI Research Center for Information Technology
> >
> > Retroactively changing the content of archived, outdated, and now
> historical W3C recommendations raises even more questions than the ones
> caused by the choice of the examples in the first place.


> > Marco
> >
> > On Mon, Mar 17, 2025 at 2:35 PM Laura Hollink <l.hollink@cwi.nl> wrote:
> > Thank you for bringing this up, Harshvardhan.
> >
> > I agree with Chaals that changing the examples has a much more positive
> effect than adding a link to a living document with examples. So, if this
> is in anyway possible, then I would vote for changing the examples
> mentioned in Harshvardhan’s email.
> >
> > The objection from Hugh (and others) that there are actually documents
> that refer to these examples, is for me an extra reason to change them. The
> noninclusive effect of these examples reaches much further than just the
> W3C document. They will be repeated in classroom, etc.
> >
> > Best,
> > Laura
> >
> > -------------------
> > Laura Hollink
> > Human Centered Data Analytics group
> > Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica
> > http://cwi.nl/~hollink/
> > l.hollink@cwi.nl
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > > Op 17 mrt 2025, om 14:03 heeft Chaals Nevile <chaals@fastmail.fm> het
> volgende geschreven:
> > >
> > > Indeed it would be cheaper. But realistically, not massively (given
> that we aren't talking about a massive amount of work given the overall
> value of OWL), and the value would equally be much lower...
> > >
> > > (Although if someone has a good pointer to add which does include more
> living examples, that would be a Good Thing to note in any Edited
> Recommendation).
> > >
> > > cheers
> > >
> > > Chaals
> > >
> > > On Monday, 17 March 2025 13:14:51 (+01:00), Dan Brickley 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.
> > >
> > > On Sat, Mar 15, 2025 at 3:33 PM Harshvardhan J. Pandit <me@harshp.com>
> wrote:
> > > Hi All.
> > > While revisiting the OWL2 primer recently at
> > > https://www.w3.org/TR/owl2-primer/, I found several examples for
> showing
> > > how OWL2 works that try to model social constructs like man/woman,
> > > parent/child, father/mother in a way that I consider increasingly out
> of
> > > touch with today. I propose that these be changed to something that
> has
> > > no issues or over which no social, ethical, or political discussions
> are
> > > necessary for the adopter as the goal here is to show how OWL2 works.
> > >
> > > ---
> > >
> > > E.g. Sec 4.2 Suppose we also want to state that all mothers are women:
> > > SubClassOf( :Mother :Woman )
> > >
> > > Here, it represents that mother is a strict subset of woman i.e. only
> > > women can be mothers. However, "Woman" here is referring to "woman as
> a
> > > human of female sex" and not "woman as gender". Rather than get into
> > > what these definitions should be, or what kind of sets exist and their
> > > intersections (e.g. woman, trans-woman, trans-man, intersex, and so
> on)
> > > - my point is that these are not good examples to start modelling with
> > > even if they might have been seen as "intuitive" some decades ago...
> > >
> > > ---
> > >
> > > E.g. Sec 4.3 For example, if we consider the classes Man and Woman, we
> > > know that no individual can be an instance of both classes (for the
> sake
> > > of the example, we disregard biological borderline cases)...
> > > DisjointClasses( :Woman :Man )
> > >
> > > Again, we should not exclude anyone here just because they are 'on the
> > > fringes' and also because there are ways people can change their sex
> and
> > > their gender -- so this example is not a good example to use here.
> > >
> > > ---
> > >
> > > E.g. Sec 4.6 For instance, the statement that B is the wife of A
> > > obviously implies that B is a woman while A is a man.
> > > ObjectPropertyDomain( :hasWife :Man ) ObjectPropertyRange( :hasWife
> > > :Woman ) ... Having these two axioms in place and given e.g. the
> > > information that Sasha is related to Hillary via the property hasWife,
> a
> > > reasoner would be able to infer that Sasha is a man and Hillary a
> woman.
> > >
> > > While I don't know what is the canonical name for people who are not
> > > married (partner?) or who are in a same-sex/gender relationship --
> this
> > > is again a good point to note that the example has implications beyond
> > > OWL and shouldn't be used here.
> > >
> > > ---
> > >
> > > E.g. Sec 5.1 The following example states that the class Mother
> consists
> > > of exactly those objects which are instances of both Woman and Parent
> > > EquivalentClasses(
> > >     :Mother
> > >     ObjectIntersectionOf( :Woman :Parent )
> > >   )
> > >
> > > Again, this has more implications to consider such as transgender
> > > mothers and also motherhood following sex-change. Therefore, this is
> not
> > > a good example to learn about how OWL.
> > >
> > > We also have in Sec 10
> > > SubClassOf(
> > >     :Father
> > >     ObjectIntersectionOf( :Man :Parent )
> > >   )
> > >
> > > ---
> > >
> > > E.g. Sec 5.1 we could characterize the class of all parents as the
> union
> > > of the classes Mother and Father
> > > EquivalentClasses(
> > >     :Parent
> > >     ObjectUnionOf( :Mother :Father )
> > >   )
> > >
> > > Parents are not exclusive to mothers and fathers e.g. stepmother or
> > > grandparent, or even non-biological parents (though they would be
> called
> > > the same). Further, it might be seen as saying parents are always a
> > > combination of a mother and a father - though this is not in the text
> or
> > > the rule. (I'll note that in Sec.9 the concept "SocialRole" is stated
> as
> > > a metaclass of Father, but isn't defined or explained)
> > >
> > > ---
> > >
> > > Is this change urgent? No. Is this outright offending anyone? I don't
> > > think so. But should we change this? Yes, I think so. Each year there
> > > will be many more new people and newer generations learning OWL, and
> > > many of us relearning it. So we shouldn't wait for this to be an issue
> > > either for being out of touch or for not being considerate before we
> > > change it.
> > >
> > > So what do we change this with? I think examples with animals (cats,
> > > dogs), shapes, etc. are universal, and aren't at risk of not
> conforming
> > > to society or for not being empathic. Or if we still want to model
> > > people, let's do friendships and work relationships that have no
> > > personal characteristics. For OWL specifically, I think the Pizza
> > > ontology used as a tutorial in Protege is also a good option as
> > > everybody likes pizza! (well, I hope).
> > > --
> > > ---
> > > Harshvardhan J. Pandit, Ph.D
> > > Assistant Professor
> > > ADAPT Centre, Dublin City University
> > > https://harshp.com/
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > >
> > >
> > > ---
> > > Marco Neumann
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Charles "Chaals" Nevile
> > > Using fastmail.fm because it's worth it
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> >
> > ---
> > Marco Neumann
> >
> >
>
>