A bit of context RE: [tm-pubsubj] RE: [VM,ALL] Revised scope statement

["Bernard Vatant" <bernard.vatant@mondeca.com>]

The previous message is forwarded from a thread in W3C SWBPD WG about the definition of a
"Vocabulary Management" Task Force, of which scope and objectives are as close as can be
to PubSubj's.

You can follow the thread (and jump in if needed) at
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swbp-wg/2004Jun/0066.html

where the TF is defined.

Bernard Vatant
Senior Consultant
Knowledge Engineering
Mondeca - www.mondeca.com
bernard.vatant@mondeca.com


> -----Message d'origine-----
> De : Bernard Vatant [mailto:bernard.vatant@mondeca.com]
> Envoye : jeudi 17 juin 2004 11:30
> A : SW Best Practices
> Cc : tm-pubsubj
> Objet : [tm-pubsubj] RE: [VM,ALL] Revised scope statement
>
>
>
> Tom
>
> Thanks for your clarifications
>
> > According to http://www.w3.org/2004/03/thes-tf/mission, the
> > THES/PORT Task Force wants to focus on guidelines and tools
> > for representing structured vocabularies using RDF/OWL.
>
> Yes
>
> > To my way of thinking, the Vocabulary Management TF would,
> > in contrast, focus on the identification of terms (and of
> > versions of terms and sets of terms) and on policies and
> > practices related to the identification of terms.
>
> The real issue here is to know if it makes sense to identify terms (or anything else)
> independently of any application context. For example, in a Thesaurus, the application
> context of a term (i.e. its contextual definition) is expressed by its BT, NT, RT, UF,
> USE, Scope Note ... If you strip a term off all this contextual information,
> what's left?
> a name? a URI? A bare identifier without any identification context is as useful as a
> credit card number outside any banking system.
> IOW, relationships between identification and contextual definition are tricky to
> entangle, and setting generic term identification valid for *any* context seems very
> difficult (read : barely possible).
>
> > I sense that we might plausibly agree on some basic principles
> > regarding identification and on the need to articulate one's
> > policies, but that there is still "an evolving diversity" of
> > approaches towards documenting, representing, and publishing
> > a vocabulary.
> >
> > But that's okay -- at that point, the VM TF could simply point
> > off to other documents and practices such as the the THES/PORT
> > TF note and the OASIS Published Subjects work you cite below.
>
> If that means : There is a generic question of term identification, generic principles
> that can be set in the SW context (see below), but specific ways to apply those
> principles
> always depend on context (e.g. Thesaurus, Ontologies, Topic Maps, Taxonomies ...) then I
> agree.
> BTW such an approach could help to get out of the endless debate on URI meaning, by
> stressing the (IMO obvious) fact that whatever an identifier identifies
> necessarily always
> assumes an application context, and that the Web (semantic or otherwise) can barely be
> considered a univocal application context ...
>
> > > 2. I share the concern expressed by Alan about "terminological" vs
> > "conceptual" approaches
> > > of Vocabulary, and the need for clarification about it in the SW community.
> > SKOS input is
> > > certainly to be brought to the table, as well as current debates about use of
> > dc:subject
> > > in various places.
> >
> > My instinct would be to cite such debates where appropriate
> > but to put alot of these issues out of scope for the VM TF
> > note itself and focus on lower-hanging fruit.  For example,
> > can we agree that terms should be both identified with URIs
> > and labelled with human language?
>
> Hopefully this is a reasonable consensus basis.
>
> > > 3. It strikes me how the scope and objectives are quite similar to those we
> set three
> > > years ago when founding the OASIS Published Subjects Technical Committee:
> > > http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=tm-pubsubj
> > > Note that this TC work has been in sort of standby for a year or so, out of
> > both lack of
> > > task force, and lack of consensus about how to tackle further deep the
> details of very
> > > difficult issues left on the table:
> > > http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tm-pubsubj/docs/recommendations/issues.htm
> > > even if a very generic recommendation was eventually released in 2003:
> > > http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/3050/pubsubj-pt1-1.02-cs.pdf
> > >
> > > I hope this work "as is" could be food for thought for this TF.
> >
> > The generic recommendation is nicely written.
>
> Congratulations passed to the TC list - and particularly to Steve Pepper.
>
> > I read it as
> > saying, in essence: "Subject headings intended for use with
> > Topic Maps should be identified with URIs, labelled with human
> > language, accompanied with a statement of intended use, and
> > described with metadata."
> > If this paraphrase does justice
> > to the recommendation, then it would seem to fit perfectly
> > with what I think the VM TF note should say.
>
> Agreed, with some minor corrections to your paraphrase.
> 1. "Subject headings" is somehow a restriction of scope of PubSubj recommendation, which
> is about "subjects" in the widest possible sense, not only those defined in
> vocabularies.
> But this restriction is valid in VM TF scope.
>
> 2. Topic Maps is the original application context for PSI. But as the
> introduction of the
> quoted recommendation hopefully makes clear, it's not the only one.
>
> 3. The "human language label" requirement is also a restriction of the PubSubj
> recommendation, which simply states that a subject indicator should be "human
> interpretable". Think about the specific shade of blue defined by the RGB code #021A81.
> This is barely a "human language label", but the color itself is pretty well defined by
> the "human readable" subject indicator http://mediagods.com/tools/rgb2hex.html?464,294
>
> > The open issues, on the other hand, seem to shade off into
> > community-specific philosophy with regard to the nature of the
> > terms identified and of the relationships among terms.  They
> > reflect that "evolving diversity" of choices about which "good
> > practice" may for valid historical reasons be still unclear --
> > things like "# versus /", the descriptive attributes of terms,
> > and details on publishing related documentation and metadata.
> >
> > Again, for such issues of "evolving diversity", I think the
> > VM TF note should simply summarize and point to ongoing work.
> > The VM TF membership would be hopefully diverse enough that we
> > could among ourselves come up with a reasonably representative
> > set of relevant citations.
>
> Agreed
>
> Bernard
>
> Bernard Vatant
> Senior Consultant
> Knowledge Engineering
> Mondeca - www.mondeca.com
> bernard.vatant@mondeca.com
>
>
> > -----Message d'origine-----
> > De : public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org
> > [mailto:public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org]De la part de Thomas Baker
> > Envoye : jeudi 17 juin 2004 05:30
> > A : Bernard Vatant
> > Cc : Thomas Baker; SW Best Practices
> > Objet : Re: [VM,ALL] Revised scope statement
> >
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Jun 16, 2004 at 06:05:18PM +0200, Bernard Vatant wrote:
> > > I have a few general comments about this TF proposal.
> > >
> > > 1. Seems to me there is a great deal of overlap with PORT, alias THES, TF.
> In fact, I
> > > understand VM work to be in many respects an extension or generalization of
> THES work,
> > > since a Thesaurus is a specific organization of a Vocabulary for a specific
> > application
> > > (unless I miss something). How will the two TF define their specific scope?
> >
> > According to http://www.w3.org/2004/03/thes-tf/mission, the
> > THES/PORT Task Force wants to focus on guidelines and tools
> > for representing structured vocabularies using RDF/OWL.
> >
> > To my way of thinking, the Vocabulary Management TF would,
> > in contrast, focus on the identification of terms (and of
> > versions of terms and sets of terms) and on policies and
> > practices related to the identification of terms.
> >
> > I sense that we might plausibly agree on some basic principles
> > regarding identification and on the need to articulate one's
> > policies, but that there is still "an evolving diversity" of
> > approaches towards documenting, representing, and publishing
> > a vocabulary.
> >
> > But that's okay -- at that point, the VM TF could simply point
> > off to other documents and practices such as the the THES/PORT
> > TF note and the OASIS Published Subjects work you cite below.
> >
> > > 2. I share the concern expressed by Alan about "terminological" vs
> > "conceptual" approaches
> > > of Vocabulary, and the need for clarification about it in the SW community.
> > SKOS input is
> > > certainly to be brought to the table, as well as current debates about use of
> > dc:subject
> > > in various places.
> >
> > My instinct would be to cite such debates where appropriate
> > but to put alot of these issues out of scope for the VM TF
> > note itself and focus on lower-hanging fruit.  For example,
> > can we agree that terms should be both identified with URIs
> > and labelled with human language?
> >
> > > 3. It strikes me how the scope and objectives are quite similar to those we
> set three
> > > years ago when founding the OASIS Published Subjects Technical Committee:
> > > http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=tm-pubsubj
> > > Note that this TC work has been in sort of standby for a year or so, out of
> > both lack of
> > > task force, and lack of consensus about how to tackle further deep the
> details of very
> > > difficult issues left on the table:
> > > http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tm-pubsubj/docs/recommendations/issues.htm
> > > even if a very generic recommendation was eventually released in 2003:
> > > http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/3050/pubsubj-pt1-1.02-cs.pdf
> > >
> > > I hope this work "as is" could be food for thought for this TF.
> >
> > The generic recommendation is nicely written.  I read it as
> > saying, in essence: "Subject headings intended for use with
> > Topic Maps should be identified with URIs, labelled with human
> > language, accompanied with a statement of intended use, and
> > described with metadata."  If this paraphrase does justice
> > to the recommendation, then it would seem to fit perfectly
> > with what I think the VM TF note should say.
> >
> > The open issues, on the other hand, seem to shade off into
> > community-specific philosophy with regard to the nature of the
> > terms identified and of the relationships among terms.  They
> > reflect that "evolving diversity" of choices about which "good
> > practice" may for valid historical reasons be still unclear --
> > things like "# versus /", the descriptive attributes of terms,
> > and details on publishing related documentation and metadata.
> >
> > Again, for such issues of "evolving diversity", I think the
> > VM TF note should simply summarize and point to ongoing work.
> > The VM TF membership would be hopefully diverse enough that we
> > could among ourselves come up with a reasonably representative
> > set of relevant citations.
> >
> > > Looking into the details, I found at least a dozen of very difficult and open
> > issues on
> > > the table. The objective of capturing the state of the art for all of them
> in a single
> > > technical note seems highly challenging, to say the least. So I was about to
> > say "count me
> > > in" for this TF ... but OTOH I'm a bit scared to get lost again in a known maze :(
> >
> > It was precisely this fear that motivated me to ask for a
> > conference call.  I agree we could easily get bogged down by
> > wading too far into detail.  The diversity of trees, however,
> > should perhaps not prevent us from stepping back and describing
> > the forest.
> >
> > Tom
> >
> > --
> > Dr. Thomas Baker                        Thomas.Baker@izb.fraunhofer.de
> > Institutszentrum Schloss Birlinghoven         mobile +49-160-9664-2129
> > Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft                          work +49-30-8109-9027
> > 53754 Sankt Augustin, Germany                    fax +49-2241-144-2352
> > Personal email: thbaker79@alumni.amherst.edu
> >
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list (and be removed from the roster of the
> OASIS TC), go to
http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/tm-pubsubj/members/leave_workgroup.php.