Re: [ontology-summit] Ontology Summit 2013

[Ali SH <asaegyn+out@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Colleagues,

I agree very strongly with Matthew West and John Sowa's comments. Apologies for not being engaged more deeply prior to this, but I would have argued to focus the summit more on expounding on the theme sketched out here: 

http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2011_ApplicationFramework_Synthesis

It is hard to develop "global" evaluation criteria, especially when the application frameworks for deployed ontologies can differ in such ways.

On a related aside, I think the summits are doing a wonderful job building and fleshing out the output of previous year's, and I appreciate the intent for 2013.  Given that this topic has been decided, I would simply echo some of the comments by others here, that:

> JSF: > What is the purpose of an ontology?

 

MW: So now we can consider the purpose of information, which in business, is
to support decisions taking (information can also be entertainment or some
combination of the two). Better information leads to better decisions. Where
decisions appear in the processes of an enterprise.
...
We can now evaluate an ontology in terms of the quality of the information
it provides. Here quality is not better or worse, but meeting agreed
requirements. An evaluation would be around the effectiveness and efficiency
with which these requirements are met.
...
So in essence it is all a matter of quality (fitness for purpose).

Given the above, and that for 2013:

MG The goal for Ontology Summit 2013 is to identify best practices for
 ontology development and evaluation.
 We will consider the entire lifecycle of an ontology -- from
 requirements gathering and analysis, through to design and
 implementation. In this endeavor, the Summit will seek collaboration
 with the software engineering and knowledge acquisition communities.
 Research in these fields has led to several mature models for the
 software lifecycle and the design of knowledge-based systems, and we
 expect that fruitful interaction among all participants will lead to a
 consensus for a methodology within ontological engineering.
 Following earlier Ontology Summit practice, the
synthesized results of this season's discourse will be published as a
Communique.

Answering such questions means understanding and deconstructing the purpose and intended application for an ontology.

Moreover, given that the ontology community through the summits has engaged in a very interesting socio-technical experiment (in terms of a community, sharing driven effort), I would suggest that we use (among other resources):

http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2011_ApplicationFramework_Synthesis

and 

http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2012_Quality_Synthesis

as important starting focal / reference points.

I also believe that we can continue to build a very valuable resource for the research / scientific community at large by building on what Amanda started last year vis-a-vis:

https://www.zotero.org/groups/ontologysummit2012/items/collectionKey/TV2QAN4H

The utility of such a resource will grow exponentially and become more apparent, given a continued / sustained effort over multiple summits.

Best,

Ali

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