Re: [ontolog-forum] standard ontology

[Steve Ray <steve@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi, I would like to confirm that Pat's alternative #1 was my intention when I drafted the objective of the summit for this year. I apologize for my silence - I'm in the midst of a cross-country move. The main point is that ontologies offer us a more rigorous means of stating what we mean to say, and rigor and precision are the very things that standards need to avoid misinterpretation down the road. Michael G. provides some good expansions of this original idea, and Ron Wheeler is laying down some great action-oriented questions.

My pragmatic side tells me that adopting ontological methods in the development of standards is more likely to succeed as a first step than trying to get people to agree on any universal "standard ontologies". 

Where there already is consensus, as in many existing standards, we could add great value by making those standards more explicitly precise. As an example, the SI units of measure are agreed to and well defined, yet those definitions and their numerous interrelationships are not explicitly stated in a computable form. One could imagine "ontologizing" that network of definitions.

I strongly support the direction this thread is taking - toward concrete, actionable topics.

- Steve

On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 11:57 AM, Peter Yim <peter.yim@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

While the Summit Theme and Goal is the only things we get to go by,
for now (see: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2009#nid1Q2F
) ... which says:

//
Theme: "Toward Ontology-based Standards"

... The goal of this Ontology Summit 2009 is to articulate the power
of synergizing these two communities in the form of a communique in
which a number of concrete challenges can be laid out. These
challenges could serve as a roadmap that will galvanize both
communities and bring this promising technical area to the attention
of others. Exactly what challenges are chosen is the subject to be
debated and decided upon during the electronic discussion period
leading up to the face-to-face meeting in April of 2009.
//

Ref. Pat's:

> (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.

I would interpret that Steve Ray (our Summit general chair, and the
person who drafted the objective statements) and co-organizers is
gravitating toward what Pat has under (1), especially since we have
addressed (2) in the summit of 2006, and the repository aspects of (3)
in the summit of 2008 (and we probably should not rehash the same
discussions we already had before.) ... During the previous calls [1]
[2], good practice" has also been sugggested (as it relates to
delivering/representing standards in ontologies) ... therefore I guess
some of (3) would apply as well.

 [1] community brainstorming -
http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2008_12_18
 [2] OntologySummit2009 launch -
http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2009_01_15

Regards.  =ppy
--


On Mon, Feb 9, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Pat Hayes <phayes@xxxxxxx> wrote:
[*updated]

> 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.

> Peter*, 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 -----
> From: ravi sharma
> To: [ontolog-forum]
> 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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-- 

Steven Ray
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Email: steve@xxxxxxxxxxx
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