Re: SUO: RE: SUO E-mail Ballot -- Please Acknowledge receipt
Adam,
This is a point I have repeatedly urged throughout the NCITS T2
ontology workshops (1996 to 19997) and throughout the SUO efforts:
the methodology is far more important than any particular collection
of categories and axioms. In fact, if your methodology is good enough,
it should be able to create the axioms and categories automatically.
That is the only cost-effective way to produce something the size
of Cyc or larger.
> Ian has tried several times to explain, as best he can, what his
> development process is. How would you describe writing a novel? Or
> producing a UML design? There is no cookbook procedure to developing a
> large ontology.
The answer is simple: the most successful novel writers, UML designers,
and programmers definitely follow a systematic methodology. For novels,
look at Isaac Asimov's list of over 500 books. And for anything
computer related, including ontologies, I would strongly recommend
Fred Brooks' _Mythical Man Month_.
> We're doing our best to create (as well as explain)
> something that to our knowledge has only been done once before on this
> large a scale.
I regard the Cyc approach as a proof that ontology development cannot
and should not be attempted on a large scale without a solid, machine-
aided methodology.
> It should not be a mystery that it is difficult to explain.
There is an enormous literature on the subject, including the many
years of accumulated experience in Cyc, WordNet, and other projects.
> The best explanation should be in reviewing the different
> versions of the SUMO, and comparing them with the sources that have been
> cited in the comments on each version.
That is the work that should be documented by the people who did
the job. They know what they have done, and they should be able
to put the comments together in a coherent HTML article that says
exactly what they have done, why they did it, what the results were,
and what more they plan to do. And there should be concrete examples
taken from the actual work to illustrate their points.
> A new version has been posted
> publicly at least every two months, and often at an interval of a
> week. Ian has also cited on many occasions changes that he's made between
> versions, as well as alerting the list to areas he plans to work on. If
> you don't like the product, that's one thing, but please don't impugn the
> openness or intent of the process employed.
I am not impugning the openness or the intent. I am just asking for
a better explanation than a log of changes from one version to the next.
John Sowa