Re: [ontology-summit] [Quality] What means

["Deborah MacPherson" <debmacp@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi John Sowa and Barry Smith- 

CSI, the specification writing organization for building architecture, says quality is "a mirror of the requirements." Do you think the gatekeepers can help define the OOR requirements and set up the dynamic tests? Of course the expert community is essential to keep the whole thing going in the right direction overall, but could different levels of specification be available anyway ~ IE every building is not a skyscraper landmark, plenty of block post offices are needed too, not to mention the do it yourselfers that could benefit from a functional OOR. Wouldn't the quality requirements for an Open Ontology Registry be geared for more than current architects and review boards, but for machines too? An ontology trawler in the future that discovers OOR may just be looking up specs and only need a basic working set of  instructions to process their data. The requirements vary and perfection needs time. As a long term goal for all projects rather than individual projects, if the OOR was like a museum, only the best would survive the test of time or special curatorial insight to stay there - the rest in deep compressed storage. 

Deborah MacPherson

On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 1:34 AM, John F. Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Barry,

Any software that is widely used is always evolving from one version
to the next.  IBM coined the term "functionally stabilized" as a
euphemism for software that has been declared obsolete and is not
being maintained.  Anything else must be considered work in progress.

Professional software developers make some limited claims in their
licenses, but usually back up those claims with nothing more than a
refund of the purchase price.  For open source software or ontologies,
any guarantees are worth exactly as much as the price -- ZERO.

> My idea is that the OOR gatekeeper function would include basic things like:
>
> a guarantee that the ontology has passed certain dynamic tests
> a guarantee that the ontology is open source
> a guarantee that the ontology has unique IDs for its terms and acceptable
> versioning policies
> a guarantee that the ontology is adequately labeled
> a guarantee that the ontology has a plurality of users

The gatekeeper should ensure that the contributors have donated the
ontologies as open source and that they conform to a standard policy
for versioning and labeling.  The metadata should also state which
tests have been passed and any reviews or comments by users.

> The OBO Foundry (http://obofoundry.org) is working towards a situation where
> Foundry ontologies will have been peer reviewed for accuracy as representations
> of the corresponding domain; in the even longer run towards a situation where
> they will be one unique recommended Foundry ontology for each domain biomedical
> domain.

Peer review is important, but the most authoritative peers are users
who have actually tested the ontologies on practical applications.

For any product, including an ontology, the best recommendations are
the reviews and reports from users that are recorded in the metadata.
As the reviews accumulate, prospective users can decide for themselves
which ontologies are best suited for their purpose(s).

John

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-- 

*************************************************
Deborah L. MacPherson
Projects Director, Accuracy&Aesthetics
Specifier, WDG Architecture PLLC

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