I am impressed by the amount and quality of the traffic - many of these
issues are close to my heart and I have spent a good part of my carrier
trying to find practical solutions to them.
The issue of expert, peer, or open market review is an interesting one. At
university I was asked to consider doing a doctorate on the value of
statistical methods for predicting commodity futures pricing (my Masters
actually recommended that the British Government do away with intervention
buying in favor of trading on the futures market - I am sorry to say they
took my advice. Little did I know that these markets would rapidly become
dominated by unscrupulous predatory traders and eventually turn into the
derivative markets responsible for our current financial meltdown).
When I did a quick review of the existing literature it was obvious that the
markets were so open to influence and manipulation that documented history
could not be used to forecast future outcomes. However as part of my
research I cam across the Delhi statistical method
http://www.iit.edu/~it/delphi.html and I subsequently adopted it in what
became the ECCMA Code management Process, a process used for the development
and maintance of the UNSPSC.
I believe other standards bodies now use a similar adaptation of the process
(I suspect the political parties are also using it). The essence of the
process is that questions can be answered with a simple quantifiable
response (for example what will be the US prime rate on January 1st 2010).
The key is of course the selection of the panel and while an invited panel
is better than an open panel size will dilute the influence of the maverick
responses. The most important aspect however is the confidentiality of the
response and the lack of group influence. Any way I will leave you to read
the detail.
Some of you may not have heard it before but my analysis of the outcome of
standard committee votes goes as follows:
1/3 of the participants are there because they want change
1/3 of the participants are there because they want to stop change
The remaining 1/3 has no idea why they are there or what is going on and as
a result the outcome of any vote will be random except for the influence of
the charismatic. Or "I have no idea what you are talking about but I like
the way you present it so I will follow your lead" - welcome to politics
101. (01)
Regards, (02)
Peter Benson (03)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F. Sowa
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2008 1:52 AM
To: Ontology Summit 2008
Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] [Quality] What means (04)
Pat C. and Mark, (05)
Your comments are well taken, and they add more evidence for
my point that there is no consensus about what a gatekeeper
should include or exclude and on what basis any such decisions
should be made. Therefore, I recommend that we have a *caretaker*
for the OOR, not a gatekeeper. (06)
The metadata would be more than sufficient to show all the reviews,
tests, and user reports that would enable potential users to decide
which option(s) to choose. (07)
PC> Among the 'reviewers' is there any reason not to have an
> expert committee that can create a binary distinction of, e.g.
> "well-structured" and "not well-structured"? The imprimatur
> can be an alternative to absolute exclusion, and still serve
> the legitimate concerns that Barry has about poorly constructed
> ontologies. (08)
Such groups would certainly be useful, but they don't have to be
official parts of the OOR. They can be outside groups that
provide a "Good Housekeeping Award for Ontologies", which would
award a little star to be attached to any web site devoted to
that ontology. (09)
As Ed B. mentioned, such roles may be best performed at the level
of users, organizations of users, or other bodies that represent
the specialized interests of a domain or group of users related by
common interests and applications. But this function would be
performed from the point of view of a certain group of users,
not from the point of view of the people who developed a particular
ontology. (010)
MM> I think ontologies are much more like refrigerators than they
> are like journal articles. I view ontologies as artifacts. Not
> surprisingly, I am much more interested in the opinions of people
> who actually use refrigerators than I am of experts in thermodynamics,
> product manufacturing, or mechanical engineering. The latter are
> people who can inspect a particular refrigerator very carefully for
> surface-level flaws, but who may have no first-hand knowledge of
> what happens when you actually plug it in. (011)
I strongly agree. (012)
John (013)
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