Re: Afghanistan War Diary as topic map in Maiana

On 29/10/10 11:21, Lars Heuer wrote:
> Hi Murray,
>
> [...]
>> Why the snarky attitude? All Lutz has done is to inform this community
>> of an interesting application of Topic Maps. If you don't believe there
>> is any value, then why tell us you think it's "great"?
>
> I don't deny that it would be great if WikiLeaks uses Topic Maps /
> RDF.

No, you don't deny it, but you contrarily continue to state you find
either no or limited value. Others obviously do: in the past few hours
both myself and Miles have publicly stated we see real value in the
project.

And while you say you're not eager to feed trolls you seem to be
exhibiting troll-like behaviour. Why? Do you find this productive?
Enjoy a good tussle? You seem to have an agenda. Why not tell us
rather than play around?

>>     * At very least this demonstrates a way to map and query a large
>>       corpus of documents that didn't originate in a form designed to
>>       be mapped. That is in itself a success, simply as an open example
>>       of how a translation project can be approached (i.e., a public
>>       demonstration is always welcome, no matter how simple);
>
> Yes. I can also translate WikiLeaks to JSON. Nobody denies that. XML
> is also translatable to JSON. Is any translation to JSON JSONish? I
> don't think so.
>
> Is any mapping Topic Maps-ish? I don't think so.

Your question is tautological. A translation of WikiLeaks into JSON is
JSON-ish, a translation into Topic Maps is Topic Maps-ish. These
mappings permit the content to be more readily used respectively
by JSON or Topic Map-based tools, which add value. Demonstrably so.

> [3 further arguments]
>
> I just say: You may be wrong if you translate WikiLeaks to Topic Maps
> without an ontology. You may translate Atom or MARC to Topic Maps 1:1,
> but where is the value?

Please don't lecture me on ontologies, certainly one of the most abused
terms of the past few decades. Machine reasoning based on this material
would be problematic at best*. There is no "ontology" required in a
simple mapping, which is all this purports to be, and indeed, a simple
mapping without interpretation is at least semantically safe, where what
you are suggesting is not so. Lutz has already replied and shown that
what they've done permits further development, and further value.

>> I don't know what if any backstory there might be in your desire to
>> be publicly critical, but on the face of it, that you can't see any
>> value in this suggests either a desire to denigrate others' successes
>> or a lack of imagination.
>
> Being published as Topic Maps (or RDF) 1:1 without semantics/an
> ontology adds no value at all.

Nonsense. Publishing WikiLeaks with an "ontology" created by an external
party (such as you, I, WikiLeaks, or anyone not involved in the origins
of the content) would be making ontological commitments that are not
justified from the content or by any authority. It's better to let
humans (users of an end-user application) make their own inferences
from the material -- where they are making explicit their own
ontological commitments -- than to provide an "ontology" that hides
those commitments and does violence to meaning in inferring an
unjustified level of truth, confidence, or understanding. I for one do
not want to be part of promulgating such falsehoods, particularly for
such politically-charged material.

In other words, if you want to be "wrong" the best avenue is provide
an externally-produced ontology.

Murray

* as reported in The Guardian yesterday, if all variants of Mohammed
   were romanised from the Arabic in the same way it would be the most
   popular name in the UK. Misidentification of people continues to be
   a major problem in military intelligence and has led to false arrests,
   imprisonment and torture. This is "being wrong" writ large and painful.
...........................................................................
Murray Altheim <murray10 at altheim dot com>                       ===  = =
http://www.altheim.com/murray/                                     = =  ===
SGML Grease Monkey, Banjo Player, Wantanabe Zen Monk               = =  = =

       Boundless wind and moon - the eye within eyes,
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