We now have, officially, an updated charter. Our charter now reads: (01)
// (02)
Ontolog is an open, international, virtual community of practice,
whose membership will: (03)
* Discuss practical issues and strategies associated with the
development and application of both formal and informal ontologies. (04)
* Identify ontological engineering approaches that might be
applied to the UBL effort, as well as to the broader domain of
eBusiness standardization efforts. (05)
* Strive to advance the field of ontological engineering and
semantic technologies, and to help move them into main stream
applications. (06)
// (07)
See the update on our wiki at:
http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nidB (08)
Regards. =ppy
-- (09)
Peter Yim wrote Fri, 18 Mar 2005 11:58:20 -0800:
> Hello Ontolog Members,
>
>
> By next Monday, March 21, 2005, it would have been 4 weeks since the
> subject matter was first brought up.
>
> I am making another request for, possibly, one last round of discussion
> on the matter, before we put it into the formal ballot and adoption
> process.
>
> If we don't see major direction changes (minor wordsmithing
> notwithstanding) in the intent of the originally proposed update (Peter
> Yim / Feb. 28, 2005), or opposition to the process, the motion below
> will be put through the adoption process, as follow. (010)
> ******
>
> Motion: to amend and update the Ontolog charter to read:
>
> //
> Ontolog is an open, international, virtual community of practice, whose
> membership will:
>
> * Discuss practical issues and strategies associated with the
> development and application of both formal and informal ontologies.
>
> * Identify ontological engineering approaches that might be applied
> to the UBL effort, as well as to the broader domain of eBusiness
> standardization efforts.
>
> * Strive to advance the field of ontological engineering and
> semantic technologies, and to help move them into main stream applications.
> //
>
> Proposed by: Peter Yim (2005.02.28)
> Seconded by: Leo Obrst (2005.03.02)
>
> ****** (011)
> The motion (or enhanced/wordsmithed version of the same ... which will
> be re-stated prior to ballot start-time, if that does emerge) shall go
> into ballot as of midnight Pacific Standard Time Tuesday, March 22, 2005
> 00:00 Hour PST ("ballot start-time").
>
> We will try to summarily adopt the motion electronically, if we can. So,
> ...
>
> Those who oppose to adopting the motion are requested to so indicate by
> responding to this thread (after the ballot start-time, and before the
> ballot end-time). (012)
> The ballot will be open for seven calendar days, i,e, ballot will be
> closed as of Tue 2005.03.29 00:00 Hr PST ("ballot end-time"). (013)
> If we get two or more "objections", we will make an attempt to go
> through a lengthier process to obtain and count the votes from all
> active members. If we do not have two or more "objections", we will
> consider this motion passed. (014)
> In the mean time (between now and ballot start-time), discussion and
> wordsmithing are most welcomed.
>
> Regards. =ppy
> -- (015)
> Leo Obrst wrote Wed, 02 Mar 2005 17:18:03 -0500:
>
>> All,
>>
>> I'm in favor of the proposed charter changes: I think it brings us
>> closer to what we are actually about now.
>> With respect to definitions of ontologies, I hope to send a portion of a
>> briefing I made at the Army Knowledge Management Conference in Ft.
>> Lauderdale late Aug/early Sept of 2004, that takes you through the
>> ontology spectrum, from taxonomy (weak and strong) to thesaurus (a
>> strong term taxonomy+) to conceptual model (weak ontology) to logical
>> theory (strong ontology). The first is unstandardized, the second and
>> third each has a set of standards associated with them, the third and
>> fourth have multiple representation languages supporting them, and the
>> last has some logic behind the representation language, typically
>> ranging from a description logic (OWL) to first-order logic (KIF, Common
>> Logic) to a higher order logic.
>> A logical theory is a formal ontology. The others range from informal to
>> semi-formal. Other informal ontologies can be natural language sentences
>> in a document. The key point about formal ontologies (logical theories)
>> is that they are machine-interpretable, i.e., semantically interpretable
>> by machine. The others are not, are only interpretable by human beings,
>> though they may be machine-readable and machine-processable.
>>
>> Hope this helps a bit.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Leo (016)
>> Peter Yim wrote Wed, 02 Mar 2005 02:10:42 -0800:
>>
>>> Good questions, Duane.
>>>
>>> Before I start to answer, let me pull out the our current
>>> charter: (ref: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl#nid011 )
>>>
>>> //
>>> = Charter of the Ontolog Forum =
>>>
>>> Ontolog is an open forum to:
>>>
>>> * Discuss practical issues and strategies associated with
>>> the development of both formal and informal ontologies used in
>>> business.
>>>
>>> * Identify ontological engineering approaches that might be
>>> applied to the UBL effort (and by extension, to the broader
>>> domain of eBusiness standardization efforts).
>>> //
>>>
>>> 1. ref your question about formal definitions -- we don't really
>>> have definitions of an "ontology" that is "adopted" by Ontolog
>>> per se. For me (who roots for the 'augmentation' camp, and not
>>> the 'AI' camp), I would start from Tom Gruber's definition that
>>> an ontology is a specification of a conceptualization, and extend
>>> from there to say that a 'formal' ontology is a specification of
>>> a conceptualization represented in a formal logic language; and
>>> an 'informal' ontology is a specification of a conceptualization
>>> represented and shared in a language that may, or may not be
>>> fully formal and computable.
>>>
>>> Of course, there are people who would argue that the latter can't
>>> even be called an ontology (but then ... that would only be a
>>> naming issue).
>>>
>>> One might refer to the Tom Gruber interview on AIS SIGSEMIS at
>>>
>http://www.sigsemis.org/newsletter/october2004/tom_gruber_interview_sigsemis
>>>
>>> (an article that Bob Smith alluded me to earlier, and which I
>>> have seen quoted by Brand Niemann and Mary Pulvermacher of Mitre
>>> since) when he did discuss formal, informal and semi-formal
>>> ontologies (see para. 3 in the article).
>>>
>>> As for various discussions on definitions of ontologies, as well
>>> as the treatment of the big 'O' (the philosopher's Ontology) and
>>> the small 'o' (the computer scientist's ontology), that have
>>> appeared in our space, I recall the following, which are all
>>> worth referring back to (I'm sure I have missed some too):
>>>
>>> (a) Slides 9~13 of the presentation by Obrst/Park/Yim
>>> (2-Apr-2002) that effectively started Ontolog (or the precursor
>>> of it) - ref:
>>> http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum//ontolog-forum/2002-05/msg00005.html
>>>
>>> (b) definition on the W3C OWL Use Cases and Requirements (mainly
>>> Leo Obrst's contribution)
>>>
>>> (c) wikipedia entries - both big 'O' and small 'o'
>>>
>>> For both of the above, see:
>>> http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?RecommendedReadingResource#nid04
>>>
>>> (d) Bo Newman's post (ref. both big and small 'O'):
>>> http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum//ontolog-forum/2002-10/msg00034.html
>>>
>>> (e) Bill McCarthy's post (ref. enterprise ontologies):
>>> http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum//ontolog-forum/2003-01/msg00017.html
>>>
>>> (f) see also: Robert Garigue's post:
>>> http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum//ontolog-forum/2005-01/msg00024.html
>>>
>>> 2. As to why 'UBL' ... that's inherited
>>>
>>> (a) of course, because I copied that from the original charter
>>> (see above),
>>>
>>> (b) for those who may not be aware, the Ontolog discussion
>>> actually started at the UBL TC (the original list address was
>>> <ubl-ontolog@xxxxxxxx> no less) in May 2002, and then spun off
>>> from there (due to a mismatch of time-lines) and reconstituted as
>>> the Ontolog Forum in Sep. 2002, and
>>>
>>> (c) the first and foremost Ontolog project, and the one its
>>> members got together for, was actually to build the "UBL-Ontology".
>>>
>>> (d) we have been, and are still getting moral support from UBL
>>> and its leadership ... which I deeply appreciate.
>>>
>>> 3. ... Do we want to do this?
>>>
>>> I like it there (for the above reasons) ... but that's me. Maybe
>>> we can talk about it, if people want to bring that up during our
>>> Thursday (2005.02.02) planning session.
>>>
>>> Regards. =ppy
>>> -- (017)
>>> Duane Nickull wrote Tue, 01 Mar 2005 13:30:03 -0800:
>>>
>>>> Peter:
>>>>
>>>> Some comments and questions inline:
>>>>
>>>> ProposedCharter = Ontolog is an open, international, virtual community
>>>> of practice, whose membership will:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> * Discuss practical issues and strategies associated with the
>>>>> development and application of both formal and informal ontologies.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> DN - is there a formal definition of "formal" vs. "informal"
>>>> ontologies?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> * Identify ontological engineering approaches that might be applied
>>>>> to the UBL effort, as well as to the broader domain of eBusiness
>>>>> standardization efforts.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> DN - why would we distinguish UBL above others? Do we want to do this?
>>>> (note - I have no opinion on this).
>>>>
>>>> Duane (018)
> === opening message of thread ===
>
> Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 22:59:28 -0800
> From: "Peter P. Yim" <peter.yim@xxxxxxxx>
> To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Updating the Ontolog Charter
>
>
> During our 2005-02-03 conference call (ref:
> http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2005_02_03#nid0112),
> we briefly discussed modifying our Ontolog Community Charter to better
> reflect the work we are (and intend to be) doing.
>
> I hereby propose the following for the community's consideration and
> discussion during this Thursday's (2005.03.03) Planning session.
>
> Proposed updated charter:
>
> Ontolog is an open, international, virtual community of practice, whose
> membership will:
>
> * Discuss practical issues and strategies associated with the
> development and application of both formal and informal ontologies.
>
> * Identify ontological engineering approaches that might be applied
> to the UBL effort, as well as to the broader domain of eBusiness
> standardization efforts.
>
> * Strive to advance the field of ontological engineering and
> semantic technologies, and to help move them into main stream applications.
>
> After we get a chance to discuss and probably wordsmith the above on
> Thursday, a formal motion (if any is proposed and seconded) will be made
> on the forum, and will be adopted by the broad active membership.
>
> Please review the above, and provide comments and amendment suggestions
> as you see fit.
>
> Thanks & regards. -ppy
> --
>
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