I also share these concerns. The market will determine the "best"
standard over time.
The most helpful thing that this group could do would be peer review of
approaches that come forth and distribution of information about
ontologies that look promising.
This will encourage collaboration and will help eliminate ontologies
that have no competitive edge. (01)
Detection of cultural biases is a helpful activity in an international
forum. (02)
Discussions about the pros and cons of applying different ontologies is
useful.
Identification of compatible ontologies and identification of points of
conflict in otherwise compatible ontologies should be helpful in
developing a consensus about an eventual "standard" set of ontologies. (03)
Providing a place where people can discuss their experience with
different sets of ontologies would be helpful.
Is there an Ontology wiki where this sort of information can be accumulated? (04)
Ron (05)
John F. Sowa wrote:
> Azamat,
>
> I have some concerns about such pronouncements, which sound good
> on the surface:
>
> > I hold with Ravi that it is a great undertaking. Though to
> > become such, the initiative needs deliberate planning...
> >
> > the Forum has time to debate and decide on a principal matter:
> > which general world model is most fitting to science, arts,
> > technology, commerce and industry, to conclude if "Standard
> > Ontology: a single malt or blended".
>
> The standards that have proved to be the most valuable in practice
> have been based on successful technologies that many independent
> groups have adopted, used, developed, and extended on major
> applications. In most cases, those standards started with a
> successful implementation (e.g., SQL or HTML), polished up the
> rough edges, made it more systematic, and added new features.
>
> About 20 years ago, some people working on standards got the idea
> that it would be good for the standards organizations to take a
> "proactive" stance in developing and promoting cleaner, more
> elegant systems that take advantage of the latest theories and
> practices. But the results have been decidedly "mixed".
>
> I once thought that "proactive standards" seemed promising,
> but after observing many attempts, I have very serious doubts.
> Among the problems with proactive standards is that they are
> inevitably designed by committees. The basic strength *and*
> weakness of a committee is the diversity of people with
> different backgrounds, views, and requirements. That gives
> them great strength in *evaluating* proposals from many
> different points of view. But it also means that committees
> inevitably have "too many cooks" who "spoil the broth" when
> they try to do the design.
>
> I don't believe that any proposed system should be adopted as
> a standard until *after* there has been a considerable amount
> of experience in using and testing it on a wide range of
> practical applications. Instead of "deliberate planning",
> we need extensive testing, comparison, and evaluation of
> proposed alternatives on major applications.
>
> John
>
>
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> (06)
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