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[ontolog-forum] Ontology and methodology (new thread off "Common Logic C

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "Peter F Brown" <peter@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sun, 18 Mar 2007 17:08:18 +0100
Message-id: <1B2253B0359130439EA571FF30251AAE025617@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
John,    (01)

"That's the way most businesses handle their personnel"    (02)

This doesn't make it right, even if it is one of the more commonplace
and "acceptable" (but nonetheless serious) modelling errors.    (03)

I didn't intent to single your post for particular attention, or snipe
at you specifically, but the hair-trigger was going to go off someday
soon. My point is more general - and hopefully pertinent to the
discussions:    (04)

There seems (to me, as a non-specialist interested party) to be a lack
of commonly accepted rules for ontology modelling that would avoid this
sort of problem/error. I don't mean "I've got this standard, why isn't
everyone using mine?". Neither do I mean in the "formal space" of
detailed "scientific" modelling. I'm more concerned about how to bridge
the gap between the formal ontology modellers and the business users:
for example the more rarefied space of business users attempting to
capture and encapsulate formal terms as part of a process of developing
an ontology, presumably with someone more than half-qualified up on the
bridge nudging the management hand on the tiller (OK, ignore the
probability that if you're using a tiller, you probably ain't got a
bridge).    (05)

The fact that there are resources available that point to good practices
(and bad ones - see for example "Ontology development Pitfalls"
http://www.ontologyportal.org/Pitfalls.html) *should* - I would have
thought - lead us at the very least in a commonly agreed direction. And
that doesn't mean going in circles...    (06)

My frustration with many of the threads on this list (and the Summit
list - although I admit that I'm no longer sure what goes where...) is
that there seems to be a lot of discussion over detail - of how to model
this, or how to present that - and not enough to the bigger pictures:
who should be involved in ontology development? What qualifies them and
how can you judge? How do you start to develop an ontology? Should you?
How do you introduce quality control? Who decides? Where's the process
when you need one?    (07)

I've seen lots of inspiring stuff over the last weeks of discussion
threads but my gut feeling is still that something more substantial is
missing, is all...    (08)

Regards,    (09)

Peter    (010)

-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F.
Sowa
Sent: 18 March 2007 15:27
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Common Logic Controlled English (CLCE)    (011)

Peter,    (012)

That's the way most businesses handle their personnel:    (013)

 > Since when is an "employee" a sub-type of "person"?!    (014)

However, one of the major mining companies used mules
to pull ore out of the mines.  (They didn't want to use
anything that might create sparks that could trigger
an explosion if there were any stray gasses around.)    (015)

When they computerized their system, they assigned
employee numbers to the mules.  For that company, you
could generalize the ontology in either of two ways:    (016)

  1. Assume that Employee is a subtype of Animal.    (017)

  2. Assume that Person could include nonhuman animals.    (018)

But in any case, whenever you say X is a subtype of Y,
you mean "every X is a Y."  That is all it says.    (019)

John    (020)

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