ppy/ontolog_chat-transcript_edited_20111201b.txt Chat transcript from room: ontolog_20111201 2011-12-01 GMT-08:00 -------- [09:25] PeterYim: Welcome to the = Ontolog Invited Speaker Presentation - Dr. Ramanathan V. Guha - Thu 2011.12.01 = Session Chair: Dr. SteveRay (CMU) Invited Speakers: Dr. RamanathanGuha (Google, schema.org) Session Topic: A conversation with R V Guha and Dan Brickley on "schema.org" . Session page: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2011_12_01 Phone (US): (206) 402-0100 ... PIN: 141184# Skype: call - "joinconference" ... PIN: 141184# if you can't find the skype keypad, try the "Call" drop down menu, and select "Show Dial Pad" Phone keypad controls: To un-mute, press "*7" ... To mute, press "*6" == Proceedings: == anonymous morphed into Guha SteveRay: Welcome, Guha. Glad you made it! Guha: thanks Guha: DanBrickley will be joining me in talking SteveRay: OK. Noted. I will start with an introduction, then hand things over to you. danbri just joined danbri thanks Guha anonymous1 morphed into Roger Cutler k goodier, L-3: Hi y'all anonymous2 morphed into Peter Benson anonymous1 morphed into DougFoxvog anonymous1 morphed into GeraldRadack anonymous1 morphed into shensley anonymous2 morphed into Kurt Kirkham anonymous1 morphed into AndreasHarth anonymous2 morphed into Kavitha Srinivas anonymous1 morphed into KingsleyIdehen anonymous4 morphed into Stefano Bocconi anonymous3 morphed into Cirrus Shakeri anonymous1 morphed into Mike Ward anonymous2 morphed into Ted Bashor anonymous morphed into BobbinTeegarden anonymous morphed into ElizabethFlorescu anonymous morphed into AdrianWalker anonymous1 morphed into VladTanasescu anonymous morphed into Lora Aroyo anonymous morphed into Stefano Bortoli PeterYim: -- session formally started 9:38am PST -- danbri: (re old Guha/Bray spec, see http://www.w3.org/Submission/1997/8/ ) danbri: -> http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-rdf-syntax-971002/ danbri: nitpic "RDFa Lite" rather than "RDF Lite"; it's about the in-html notation danbri: Working Draft out next week anonymous1 morphed into FrankChum anonymous1 morphed into GaryBergCross danbri: discussion of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8000 http://www.dataforge.com/wpblog/index.php/industry-news/iso-22745-standard-based-exchange-of-product-data/ SteveRay: PeterBenson: ISO 22745 is a set of standard tags with many entries already. PeterYim: Guha: target audience for schema.org is the "webmasters" danbri: example: http://schema.org/Movie DougFoxvog: schema.org could use classification for PhysicalObject. A common superclass Agent of Person & Organization would be useful . danbri: http://www.rssboard.org/rss-0-9-0 anonymous morphed into Alessander Botti Benevides LeoObrst: S-expressions in Lisp. PeterYim: SteveRay paraphrasing JohnSowa's questions for Guha - ref: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2011-11/msg00141.html danbri: so RDF '97 was PICS-NG, which used s-expressions: http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-pics-ng-metadata danbri: (then XML happened) KingsleyIdehen: John's actual post: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2011-11/msg00141.html JoelBender: (and then N3 happened) KingsleyIdehen: Then Linked Data happened danbri: (and then JSON happened...) DougFoxvog: XML is not restricted to triples. Why was/is RDF so restricted? KingsleyIdehen: Yes, Linked Data brings it back home to simplicity JoelBender: (and now JSON-LD is happening ... maybe) KingsleyIdehen: Yes, but Linked Data is agnostic re. EAV/SPO based 3-tuples k goodier, L-3: Keeping things simple and delivering value KingsleyIdehen: and via HTTP we can negotiate representation FrankChum: Doug, I like RDF for its simplicity and not as restricted anonymous morphed into Arnaud J Le Hors KingsleyIdehen: Good example of this all working, via Linked Data simplicity: http://wiki.goodrelations-vocabulary.org/Microdata KingsleyIdehen: Yes, we have to "hold our noses" re. large scale adoption . +1 NicolaGuarino: usual problem with skype, sorry KingsleyIdehen: Here is a link to a note showing how Schema.org mapped to DBpedia leads to network effects: https://plus.google.com/112399767740508618350/posts/ck2yhgTWxtD KingsleyIdehen: A specific page showing LOD Cloud instance data based on Schema.org cross links: http://lod.openlinksw.com/describe/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fschema.org%2FLandmarksOrHistoricalBuildings&urilookup=1 SteveRay: @Nicola: OK, I'll try you again after Ali is done with his second question, if you raise your hand again. KingsleyIdehen: Final page showing links between Schema.org and DBpedia (and other vocabularies which appear as you follow-your-nose through the Linked Data): http://lod.openlinksw.com/describe/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fschema.org%2FLandmarksOrHistoricalBuildings&p=1&lp=89&op=-1&last=&gp=1 danbri: on the 'do we need rdf' question, .... we see two trends: (1) people who use RDF, find frustration with the fiddly details of the spec (datatypes, etc.). Perhaps such things are just inherently annoying. There needs to be a rule, but the rule is arbitrary. (2) people who don't use RDF explicitly, often drift towards a data model that is very RDF-like, because RDF didn't appear from nowhere. Graph-shaped data is a very common pattern (cf. Kingsley on EAV). Hence all recent talk on 'social graph', 'interest graph', etc. KingsleyIdehen: Methinks: Schema.org and Linked Data have a mutually beneficial relationship that in effect fans out to adding more semantic structure to links (actually relations) on the WWW. Schema.org delivers immediate and palpable value NicolaGuarino: @Steve: sorry, I am not able to talk through skype, too bad PeterYim: @Nicola: please type out your question on the chat anonymous1 morphed into DuaneNickull PeterYim: schema.org - as DanBrickley puts it - characterized by a small working group, consensus, ability to move and make decisions quickly NicolaGuarino: Here is the comment I wanted to make: The reason why super-simple ontologies like FOAF work is that the words are simple to understand But there are words which everybody understands, and words that are ambiguous and difficult to define or explain (e.g., service, unemployed person). It is a fact that people doing markup don't care about deep semantics of their tag. So if the goal is to get billions of pages marked up, that's fine. But what about USING these marked up pages for information integration, services mashup and so on, instead of just for search? BOTTOM LINE: extensive tagging with little semantics may be very useful for search, but not for integration of information NicolaGuarino: @Guha: but even for application-dependent vocabularies we sometime need very crisp formal definitions.... danbri: (re starting points of Web: http://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal-msw.html has seeds of RDF in there too) NicolaGuarino: Deep semantics is needed (sometimes) also for application-dependent purposes, not just for universal purposes AdrianWalker: To go beyond search applications, some degree of NLP is unavoidable? DougFoxvog: I suggest that small ontologies can build on larger existing ones. Those who use them do not need to use everything from the larger ontologies. Deep ontologies would have rules and reasoning structures that are immaterial to small systems that use parts of them. PeterBenson: our experience with ISO 8000 is that you need sufficient data to meet a defined requirement - nothing more. As requirements grow so does the depth of data. NicolaGuarino: Besides schema.org, why not investing on a MINIMAL formal vocabulary, clarifying for instance the various notions of PART or DEPENDENCE? Stefano Bortoli: being to narrow in the definition of schemas might end up in a higher cost of maintenance of the application after all. This is a less we should have learned from software engineering at least. So, deep thinking and generalization to some extent is necessary. Simple and easy is good in the short term, but we risk to create asbestos that will be very hard to handle in the future NicolaGuarino: @Stefano Bortoli: +1 PeterYim: @JamesSorace - you can click on the "Settings" button (at the top center of the window) that modify "anonymous" into your real name DougFoxvog: Contexts can separate ontologies into subsets. Guha is talking about the problems of "an ontology of everything". Cyc developed the idea of Microtheories (but i'm not sure if it was after he left). By placing rules and relationships in such contexts (or microtheories) one can avoid many of the problems of an "ontology of everything". This becomes an issue on the Semantic Web, where triples make it hard to place statements within specific contexts. VladTanasescu: Any pointers to this ACM article? GaryBergCross: What consideration has schema.org given to controlled natural languages? Some efforts have tried to make OWL and Common Logic easier to express. danbri: @DougFoxvog: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/guha/ has 'Contexts: A Formalization and Some Applications'... Stefano Bortoli: @Dough I don't think that anyone is really aiming at the "philosophical ontology", not in the Semantic Web at least. Indeed, the first efforts were spent in automatic ontology mappings, rather than producing semantically annotated data. Contexts are particularly complex to manage in a context-less environment such as the WEB. The less we can do, is to try to be formal in defining concepts to reduce the risk of misunderstanding. GaryBergCross: One issue with Microtheories is when do your create a new one versus adapt an existing one. PeterYim: Guha: currently adoption is in the order of thousands of sites and billions of pages now SteveRay: Certainly some standards development efforts are importing existing external concepts or "ontologies" to a much greater degree today. danbri: on re-use, one q is whether publishers/authors of instance data should bear the cost of that sharing/re-use. Mainstream RDF/SemWeb culture is to have instance data cite several different ontologies. Schema.org rather pre-packages things and offers the package as a single usable thing... danbri: re rNews - see http://blog.schema.org/2011/09/extended-schemaorg-news-support.html for details danbri: http://www.iptc.org/site/Home/Media_Releases/schema.org_adopts_IPTC's_rNews_for_news_markup Roger Cutler: I don't think he said billions of pages. Thousands of sites & billions of pages means millions of pages per site, right? danbri: (yup, we should make the various mappings to/from schema.org easier to find) DougFoxvog: @Gary -- You can create a new microtheory when describing a narrower field or are using multiple existing contexts, or when presenting information about a specific event or other individual. danbri: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/LRMI/Specification_v0.5 NicolaGuarino: A couple of problems I find in the current taxonomic structure of schema.org: 1. A governmentOffice is both a place and an organization ChristopherSpottiswoode: What a privilege that was, to be able to listen in on that conversation, with all that experience! Thank you all. DougFoxvog: @Gary -- adapt an existing context when providing more info @ same level Stefano Bortoli: thanks Stefano Bortoli: bye PeterYim: Great session ... thank you Guha, Dan and everyone all for coming! Guha: Thank you everyone danbri: Thanks all PeterYim: -- session ended : 11:00am PST --