John Sowa et al,
<rant>I do agree SMEs' stakeholdership in an ontology is key
to what ails us. But the problem is with the way we create
ontologies; until we grapple with that, "better tools are the
answer" is merely lipstick on a pig. SMEs certainly should
recoil at stuff like:
<rdf:Property rdf:about="&p3p;purposeOptIn">
<rdfs:label xml:lang="en">purpose(opt in)</rdfs:label>
<rdfs:comment>
Data may be used for this purpose only when the user
affirmatively requests this use.
</rdfs:comment>
<rdfs:domain rdf:resource="&p3p;Statement"/>
<rdfs:range rdf:resource="&p3p;PurposeClass"/>
<rdfs:subPropertyOf rdf:resource="&p3p;purpose"/>
</rdf:Property>
No amount of tools, in my humble opinion, will ever hide
this odiferous crap. I strongly suspect that I could pull
equally useless *properties* from whatever ontology is being hoisted
on a pedestal, and effortlessly mock it too. IOW the way we use the
RDF is thoroughly corrupt. Why/how? Here's the nub.
There are two competing notions of the predicate
in theories of grammar.[1]
The first concerns traditional grammar, which tends to view a
predicate as one of two main parts of a sentence, the other part
being the subject; the purpose of the
predicate is to modify the subject. The second derives from work
in predicate calculus (predicate logic, first order logic)
and is prominent in modern theories of syntax and grammar. In this
approach, the predicate of a sentence corresponds mainly to the
main verb and any auxiliaries that accompany the main verb,
whereas the arguments of that
predicate (e.g. the subject and object noun phrases) are outside the predicate. [wikipedia]
If (1) rdf:Statement = rdf:subject + rdf:predicate + rdf:object,
then to which of these "competing notions" does rdf:predicate refer?
If you say the former, then I maintain the formulation should be (2)
rdf:Statement = rdf:subject + rdf:predicate. If you say the latter,
then WHERE ARE THE VERBS - why do we see predicates defined like
<rdf:Property rdf:about="&p3p;purposeOptIn">
And if you were to say neither, then I ask why on earth is this
thing called a "Statement"? Can we not stop making words up that
suit arbitrary purposes?
In short, the entire body of predicates defined by the "ontologist
community" to-date are fundamentally flawed. It's small wonder SMEs
look askance at ontologists and their gee-whiz ideas; in their gut,
they know something is amiss. (Note: this perspective is completely
scoped within the RDF, where many of us 'practitioners' must wallow,
so replies of 'use CycL' are simply unresponsive to the needs of
what, 95% of the people in this forum.)
</rant>
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