Re: rdfms-assertion and webont

jeremy -
  the following is currently only my opinion, but I could see it being 
a chair's ruling at some point:

I see the issue of social meaning to be extremely important and 
powerful with respect to the success of the Semantic Web, the meaning 
of RDF, etc. - but I also think it is NOT appropriate AS AN ISSUE for 
WOWG -- basically, we as a WG do not have to have a consensus opinion 
on this -- here's why:

1 - rdfs:comment is in Owl Full, whatever happens.  Our Model Theory 
does not CHANGE its meaning - so if in the Recommendation process, 
the social meaning issue is left the same, then we accept that; if it 
is changed, then we accept that.  (As individuals we should all try 
to get this issue to end up where we want)

2 - we do have an issue that is a legitimate WOWG issue which is 
whether the annotations are in OWL DL (and/or Lite).  This could be 
influenced by the social meaning issue

3- we never in any way FORCE anyone to use refs:comment, label etc. 
As such, a user of OWL, who doesn't believe in the social meaning 
stuff, is never forced to use it -- they can avoid importing 
documents with comments, they can avoid using them, etc.

So, searching our documents, I don't see anywhere where we would 
change a document or a test case BASED ON THE SOCIAL MEANING (we well 
might change one based on whether this is in Lite or Full, but that's 
a different issue as I emphasize)

so - the example you give below would be an Owl issue if you are 
willing to put in a test case which says:

>If A defines an innocent vocabulary,
>If B describes a person "John Doe" in the vocab of A
>If C defines a class using vocab of A and making defammatory assertions
>about its members,
>and
>D imports  A, B and C, and "John Doe" fits the description in C.

DL-entails

owl:insulted "John Doe"

which of course is not true -- the RDF meaning insists that John can 
consider himself insulted (i.e. he would be socially-entailed as you 
call it below)
but that does not come from OWL

write me an example where the presence of a comment in a DL document 
changes something in the formal OWL entailment and I would consider 
this an OWL issue.


So - In the very hypothetical case that  Guus and I did chair's 
ruling that said "the issue of whether annotations are in DL and Lite 
is a WOWG issue, and should be resolved; but the issue of the social 
meaning of these annotations is out of our charter and in the charter 
of RDF Core."

Why would this be something that would be appealed/objected to?

(note for real - I'm using this to pose the question in an extreme, 
I'm really trying to probe the edges - I think if we enter this 
realm, and especially in the very nasty case where we went to a vote, 
and over some objections (including yours and mine) the OWL group 
ended up with a result that went counter to RDF Core, we would create 
a mess that we really don't need to from a technical specification 
perspective??

To put it in Dan's terms, show me a test case that exposes the issue 
of social meaning -- NOT the issue of whether rdfs:comment is in Owl 
Lite.








At 11:06 +0100 1/24/03, Jeremy Carroll wrote:
>Hello Jim, Guus
>
>(Peter I am copying you out FYI, if you think we should follow up on this,
>why don't we do that on the other thread: "AS&S - next steps")
>
>I wanted to adequately alert you of the interaction between rdfms-assertion
>and the annotation issues that peter and I will report back on.
>
>If I have a class say:
>
><owl:Class rdf:ID="c">
>    <rdfs:comment>This is what a c is</rdfs:comment>
>    <rdfs:isDefinedBy rdf:resource="http:/example.org/"/>
></owl:Class>
>
>I think most of us would see this as unproblematic.
>However, when combined with rdfms-assertion, using this class involves some
>level of buy-in to both the comment and, potential, the isDefinedBy object,
>which may not even be retrievable, let alone in a language that you
>understand.
>
>I think that this is correct, and so support (to some extent) the RDF Core
>WG position.
>I believe Peter sees this as badly broken (a position I can understand).
>
>I am also pretty sure that some WG members feel as strongly as Peter on the
>other side; there is also the possibility of inter-WG conflict on this.
>
>Personally, I feel we must allow rdfs:comment and rdfs:isDefinedBy, and
>cannot disown the social meaning in RDF.
>
>A real technical problem here is that OWL classes can be defined using
>descriptions and then it really is not clear who is buying into what social
>meaning.
>
>If A defines an innocent vocabulary,
>If B describes a person "John Doe" in the vocab of A
>If C defines a class using vocab of A and making defammatory assertions
>about its members,
>and
>D imports  A, B and C, and "John Doe" fits the description in C.
>
>We have the RDF Graph of D "socially entailing"  defaming John Doe; and it
>really doesn't seem to be anybody's fault.
>D would be well-advised to not import C's class definitions, since whatever
>their technical merit the comments are problematic.
>
>==
>
>I get told off in the Jena developers list for inappropriate comments in my
>code.
>(the cock up cock up ...)
>
>===
>
>In my view, this issue alone could take more than a month to resolve; and
>this argues for publishing WDs now.
>
>Jeremy


-- 
Professor James Hendler				  hendler@cs.umd.edu
Director, Semantic Web and Agent Technologies	  301-405-2696
Maryland Information and Network Dynamics Lab.	  301-405-6707 (Fax)
Univ of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742	  240-731-3822 (Cell)
http://www.cs.umd.edu/users/hendler

Received on Friday, 24 January 2003 16:55:13 UTC