Hello Ontolog Members, (01)
By next Monday, March 21, 2005, it would have been 4 weeks since
the subject matter was first brought up. (02)
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. (03)
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. (04)
****** (05)
Motion: to amend and update the Ontolog charter to read: (06)
//
Ontolog is an open, international, virtual community of practice,
whose membership will: (07)
* Discuss practical issues and strategies associated with the
development and application of both formal and informal ontologies. (08)
* Identify ontological engineering approaches that might be
applied to the UBL effort, as well as to the broader domain of
eBusiness standardization efforts. (09)
* Strive to advance the field of ontological engineering and
semantic technologies, and to help move them into main stream
applications.
// (010)
Proposed by: Peter Yim (2005.02.28)
Seconded by: Leo Obrst (2005.03.02) (011)
****** (012)
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"). (013)
We will try to summarily adopt the motion electronically, if we
can. So, ... (014)
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). (015)
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"). (016)
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. (017)
In the mean time (between now and ballot start-time), discussion
and wordsmithing are most welcomed. (018)
Regards. =ppy
-- (019)
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 (020)
> 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
>>-- (021)
>>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 (022)
=== opening message of thread === (023)
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 (024)
During our 2005-02-03 conference call (ref:
http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2005_02_03#nid0112), (025)
we briefly discussed modifying our Ontolog Community Charter to
better reflect the work we are (and intend to be) doing. (026)
I hereby propose the following for the community's consideration
and discussion during this Thursday's (2005.03.03) Planning session. (027)
Proposed updated charter: (028)
Ontolog is an open, international, virtual community of practice,
whose membership will: (029)
* Discuss practical issues and strategies associated with the
development and application of both formal and informal ontologies. (030)
* Identify ontological engineering approaches that might be
applied to the UBL effort, as well as to the broader domain of
eBusiness standardization efforts. (031)
* Strive to advance the field of ontological engineering and
semantic technologies, and to help move them into main stream
applications. (032)
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. (033)
Please review the above, and provide comments and amendment
suggestions as you see fit. (034)
Thanks & regards. -ppy
--
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