RE: SUO: The Story So Far - Request for vote
Dear James,
I agree with Matthew's answers to your questions; some
further clarifications follow.
At 7:16 PM -0500 10/3/01, Schoening, James R CECOM DCSC4I wrote:
>1. Does this change the Scope? If so, this can be done by WG majority vote
>and submission of a new Project Authorization Request, but it shouldn't be
>taken lightly.
Not necessarily. Since the Scope is formulated in informal terms (an
ontology is a set of concepts, axioms, and relationships that
describe a domain of interest), the issue whether this set should be
limited to mutually consistent axioms is left open. A modular
structure is compatible with this wording, although a clarification
would be useful.
>
>2. Are you proposing SUO take only a non-monolithic approach, i.e. that it
>not work on monolithic approaches, or are you just seeking a level of
>consensus?
I am first seeking a level of consensus. If a good consensus exist,
then we may decide not to work on monolithic approaches (in practice,
monolithic approaches may be still pursued by subsets of SUO members,
who accept at least a formal comparison - if not a "mapping" -
between their approach and other alternative approaches)
>3. There is a big difference between people who agree with an approach vs.
>people who are willing to do real work on one. Why not recruit some
>like-minded members and start working on a document with the desired
>approach?
The sense of my proposal is to adopt a different spirit in our
discussions: instead of defending an certain ontological approach in
a "religious" way, let's incourage people to explain, motivate and
formalize their approach (if enough like-minded colleagues are
willing to help them), in order to perform comparisons and
evaluations a-posteriori, on the basis of actual usability and formal
consequences.
Of course, if nobody is willing to work on a particular approach,
that approach will be automatically dismissed, or "frozen".
Nevertheless, explicitly considering it as an alternative would have
a high documentation value, and it would also improve the
trustability in the SUO methodology.
>
>4. How does this relate to the Merged Ontology, which is now under SUO WG
>control? If that could be steered to a non-monolithic approach, you could
>seek consensus or take a vote to do so, but it might be better to achieve
>this with contributed content vs. a vote. Votes without action won't get
>you there.
I believe that the Merged Ontology is a good starting point, which
must be considered together with other starting points, such as
Matthew's documents, John's book or our own papers. It has to be
carefully analyzed, in the light of other independent inputs, in
order to possibly distinguish different levels of agreement within
it. Such different agreements will be probably the result of
different ontological views, which must be isolated, explained,
motivated and formalized. The result of this process will either be a
better ontology, or, more probably, a modularized one.
This is an alternative (i.e., "modularizing" the current merged
ontology, on the basis of other inputs). Another alternative is to
consider the current merged ontology as a single module, allowing
comparisons with other modules. I wouldn't support this option.
-- Nicola
---------------------------------
Nicola Guarino
National Research Council phone: +39 O49 8295751
LADSEB-CNR fax: +39 O49 8295763
Corso Stati Uniti, 4 email: Nicola.Guarino@ladseb.pd.cnr.it
I-35127 Padova
Italy
http://www.ladseb.pd.cnr.it/infor/ontology/ontology.html
(***updated 22/2/2001 ***)