Re: DBpedia as possible project
"Andrew S. Townley" <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.text.xml.xtm.general |
|---|---|
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
Hi Peter, Long time, and nice to "see" you. :) On 2 Nov 2010, at 12:43 AM, Research wrote: > I agree with Murray's concerns about (all-too-common) modelling abuses: for > example (and I'm sorry for picking on Lars and this example but it's a good > bad one), an astronaut is not a specialised class of person - it is a role > type played by a person type - and when badly modelled, leads to screw-ups > and false inferences later on: what happens when the person is doing > something other than being an astronaut (being a Playmate for example?)? or > is no longer an astronaut? Roles help give context to people's relationship > with others and the world. Generally, I'd agree with this. However, role types (and roles) are only relevant in context (reflecting on discussions in Vienna long ago). With TMDM, you have associations and that's fine in this specific case, but the only thing that you have to identify the "role type" of a particular topic in the "current", "general" or "base case" context when you trip over it on the street is the types it claims to be. The overall problem with modeling information is that it is always presented based on the assumptions and implicit context of the person (or the software written by said person that encodes these assumptions). Information, by definition isn't generally useful, so while I agree with the sentiment of what you're saying, I don't really think this is an easily solvable problem dealing with real-world topic maps that are intended to be digestable by humans without their heads exploding. ;) You can always add additional information to a map to surface these assumptions and more completely define the context. The risk is that in doing so you're somewhat muting the power of what is attempting to be said. I'd be very interested in hearing how this problem has been resolved (or explicitly) ignored in real-world, useful examples too. Hope you've been keeping well. Cheers, ast -- Andrew S. Townley <[email protected]> http://atownley.org