Umm... I am confused (and I apologize for missing the telecon that might have unconfused me.) The topic for the current Summit mixes the topics of 'ontology' and 'standards'. But this can be understood in several rather different ways.
(1) Using ontologies as a tool in the business of writing standards. Here, 'writing standards' is a broadly conceived topic area, and the standards might refer to almost anything. For example, someone might argue that the business of writing standards for future high-speed USB communication protocols would benefit from the participants writing and using ontologies, or perhaps a particular ontology.
(2) Defining, or approaching the definition of, a standard ontology. This would presumably be some variety of 'unified upper level' or 'comprehensive' ontology, or perhaps a collection of related ontologies, etc.., of the kind developed as part of the Cyc project or the SUMO effort, or as proposed by Pat Cassidy or Azamat in previous postings.
(3) Standardizing the business of writing ontologies themselves. This would presumably link with our previous focus on ontology repositories, where a strong theme emerged of "quality control" for ontologies, and several nascent ontology-writing methodologies, or at least collections of good-practice rules and maxims, seemed to be visible in the general intellectual murk.
If I follow Azamat and Ravi's messages, below, they seem (?) to be talking about (2), but I'm not sure that this is the intended interpretation for the Summit.
Pater, can you confirm/clarify?
Pat Hayes
------ On Feb 9, 2009, at 11:3
9 AM, Azamat wrote: On Saturday, February 07, 2009 7:32 PM, Ravi wrote: "how close are we to agreeing on a few approaches for "standards" that most ontology formalisms would consider "Essential" for Communication..." Not very close. Still the nasty and rocky issues of the standard model have to be resolved. Some of them are: Which basic categories of things go as the canonical classes of entities and relationships? What is the basic level of the standard scheme? Are the standard categories defined by members (extension) or properties (intension); How the standard classes are organized? How domain ontologies and data models are structured by standard ontology? What formal languages are most effective to represent the standard classes and relations? Besides, there is the question of questions: what is the nature of standard ontology, is it about the real world categorization: arranging, grouping, or distributing all things and items into standard categories according to their natural relationships. Or, it is something else, unified metadata scheme, canonic information reference, global data model, etc.? So, it appears there is still some work to do. Regards, Azamat Abdoullaev ----- Original Message ----- Sent: Saturday, February 07, 2009 7:32 PM Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Is there something I missed?
John, Azamat, Pat and other participants and contributors: Though a late entrant and guilty of not having read the full thread: So, how close are we to agreeing on a few approaches for "standards" that most ontology formalisms would consider "Essential" for Communication (and inter operation if machine interpreted- a category of high relevance today) and "Desirable" or "Nice to Have". Would these be approached from "Meta-data" or "attributes" discussed some time ago, or would these specify items such as XML, OWL, UML etc? Where do we start (Context, Concept), Triples based "things"and "relationships", how far we go to connect to CL, FOL, etc.? For some of us, practical hints, even if these need to go to more mature standards later, are helpful, and Steve Ray would also appreciate them as we are closer to next Summit! Best Regards. --
Thanks.
Ravi
(Dr. Ravi Sharma)
313 204 1740 Mobile
On Sat, Feb 7, 2009 at 11:51 AM, John F. Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: Ron and Azamat,
It's important to have an appropriate balance between talk and action.
RW> It appears that there is very little enthusiasm for real work here.
> Endless arguments around the edges of each topic seem to be the
> flavour of the month. There is very little interest is highlighting
> areas of agreement except to buttress some argument against someone
> else's ideas.
I sympathize with that complaint.
AA> ... the Forum happened to collect most advanced minds in the
> sphere of ontology and ontology engineering. With high
> organization, the Group can solve most challenging tasks,
> delivering outstanding products.
I agree with the word 'can'. The group has the *potential* to
do something important, but there are many email groups like this
one that have had good participants, but very little *observable*
results. I emphasized the word 'observable', because many ideas
that people learn from a book, university, or discussion group
may eventually be transformed into action.
One thing that facilitates the transfer of ideas into action is
*money*. An enlightened manager with sufficient funding can often
transform good ideas into outstanding products. But misguided
managers can produce disasters. And to protect the guilty, I
won't cite some cases where the same manager pushed a good idea
to a brilliant success, was promoted to a more powerful position,
and later pushed some bad ideas to disaster.
AA> In many Russian village, you may find places where few local
> senior women, babushkas, sit all day talking about nothing.
> The content and the purpose are of little importance. What is
> important, the act of exchanging rumors, anecdotes, and gossips,
> the process of conversation. Usually, these closed country fora
> led by gabbiest babushkas, full of trivial news.
I don't want to defend everything that the babushki discuss, but
there have been sociological studies that show the importance of
seemingly trivial gossip. If you type "gossip sociology" to Google,
you'll get over a million hits. Following is the first one:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-19960701-000035.html
The real slant on gossip
Some excerpts below.
If you just read the published literature, you can gather a great
deal of important detail that has been well reviewed and edited.
But you also get a lot of mediocre writing that was reviewed,
considered moderately acceptable, and never proved to be useful.
But there are several important things you don't get:
1. Detailed debate that evaluates the ideas and provides personal
experience about how those ideas worked out in practice.
2. Disasters, which the people involved almost never want to
publish and the people who were not involved seldom have
enough information to analyze and explain.
3. Guidelines about how to act in similar situations and which
people to trust, collaborate with, or avoid.
The babushki are ruthless in stating their opinions about all
such issues that affect their daily lives. Many of those issues
may be trivial on a grand scale, but they can be critical for
their village or neighborhood.
We have had a lot of useful "gossip" and information on this list,
but I agree with Ron that we need to develop a more effective
way to transfer the good ideas into action.
John
___________________________________________________________________
Focuses on the benefits from gossiping. Gossip in newspaper columns;
Primary function of gossip; Gossip among preteens. INSET: The high-
tech grapevine....
"For a real understanding of our social environment, gossip is
essential," agrees Jack Levin, Ph.D., professor of sociology and
criminology at Boston's Northeastern University and coauthor of
_Gossip: The Inside Scoop_. "Its primary function is to help us
make social comparisons...."
In the more than two dozen on-line rumors Bordia looked at for study of
how rumors are transmitted via computer, he found that "conversations"
have a typical pattern: First, they're tentatively introduced,
generating, a flurry of requests for information. Next, facts and
personal experiences get shared and the group tries to verify the
rumor's veracity. Finally, the group breaks up or moves on to another topic.
C. Lee Harrington, a professor of sociology at Miami University in
Ohio, who's conducted her own cybergossip survey, concurs. She says chat
room enthusiasts, like ordinary gossipers, "attempt to establish the
veracity of the information they're sharing through references to
outside sources. They rely on secondary sources, refer to personal
knowledge and relationships, or, as is the case with entertainment
gossip, claim to have direct connections to it, accounting for their
'inside information.'"
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