SUO: Ballot Comment
-----Original Message-----
From: John.Velman@HSC.com
To: Schoening, James R CECOM DCSC4I
Sent: 7/26/01 5:33 PM
Subject: Re: SUO E-mail Ballot -- Please Acknowledge receipt
I abstain.
I do this somewhat reluctantly, because I do think it is
important to move forward. Hence, if there are enough votes
to carry this forward, I also won't vote to block that effort.
I would like to cast a "yes", because a great deal of work
has gone into this, and there are a number of good features to
it. I wouldn't vote against it based on detailed technical
issues, nor on disagreements as to whether or not the ontology
presented represents "reality", although I have a few such
issues with the ontology as it stands. For engineering purposes, we
need (in my opinion) to have an ontology that is adequate for
the purpose; it doesn't necessarily have to agree with my
personal ontological commitments (whatever they may be).
On the other hand, I think whatever we accept as a document for
working group work should have a clear guiding principal, and a
defined methodology that supports it. I also would like to see
an organization of material that allows one to see the architecture
of the ontology more easily.
The existing document exhibits too clearly (for my taste) its
heritage as a merger of diverse documents. It goes rather deep in
some areas, and is rather shallow in other areas. Perhaps one approach
would to be to only present part of the work already accomplished,
as a starter document. This could perhaps be done in a way that
was balanced as to the level (granularity?) reached in different
branches. Then, things could be added after some concensus was
reached on the initial parts. But, I'm suggesting some parts
of a method, without having given a guiding principle, myself.
John Velman
"Schoening, James R CECOM DCSC4I"
<James.Schoening@mail1.monmouth.army.mil>
on 07/19/2001 08:30:41 PM
To: "'matthew.r.west@is.shell.com '" <matthew.r.west@is.shell.com>,
"'shams@pnu.ac.ir '" <shams@pnu.ac.ir>,
"'michael.f.uschold@boeing.com '" <michael.f.uschold@boeing.com>,
"'mcdavid@us.ibm.com '" <mcdavid@us.ibm.com>,
"'rekent@ontologos.org
'" <rekent@ontologos.org>, "'phil.jackson@computer.org '"
<phil.jackson@computer.org>, "'cassidy@micra.com '"
<cassidy@micra.com>, "'zarri@ivry.cnrs.fr '"
<zarri@ivry.cnrs.fr>,
"'phayes@ai.uwf.edu '" <phayes@ai.uwf.edu>, "Schoening, James R
CECOM DCSC4I" <James.Schoening@mail1.monmouth.army.mil>,
"'Graham.Horn@aihw.gov.au '" <Graham.Horn@aihw.gov.au>,
"'fgm@fla.fujitsu.com '" <fgm@fla.fujitsu.com>,
"'martin_king@uk.ibm.com '" <martin_king@uk.ibm.com>,
"'sofia@gia.ist.utl.pt '" <sofia@gia.ist.utl.pt>, "'fnc@mitre.org
'"
<fnc@mitre.org>, "'chris.angus@kalido.com '"
<chris.angus@kalido.com>, "'tmk@lsc.co.uk '" <tmk@lsc.co.uk>,
"'john.r.velman@boeing.com '" <john.r.velman@boeing.com>,
"'iniles@teknowledge.com '" <iniles@teknowledge.com>,
"'tinwisle@bloomington.in.us '" <tinwisle@bloomington.in.us>,
"'piph@erols.com '" <piph@erols.com>, "'jawbrey@oakland.edu '"
<jawbrey@oakland.edu>, "'kath@umod.kiev.ua '"
<kath@umod.kiev.ua>,
"'jdickert@dtic.mil '" <jdickert@dtic.mil>,
"'jtonkel@earthlink.net
'" <jtonkel@earthlink.net>, "'chris_partridge@csi.com '"
<chris_partridge@csi.com>, "'frank@farance.com '"
<frank@farance.com>, "'bordogna@tin.it '" <bordogna@tin.it>,
"'stborgo@indiana.edu '" <stborgo@indiana.edu>,
"'jhalcomb@teknowledge.com '" <jhalcomb@teknowledge.com>,
"'miz@ei.sanken.osaka-u.ac.jp '" <miz@ei.sanken.osaka-u.ac.jp>,
"'werner@landc.be '" <werner@landc.be>, "'gangemi@itbm.rm.cnr.it
'"
<gangemi@itbm.rm.cnr.it>, "'skydog@pacbell.net '"
<skydog@pacbell.net>, "'lee@textwise.com '" <lee@textwise.com>,
"'apease@teknowledge.com '" <apease@teknowledge.com>,
"'Nicola.Guarino@ladseb.pd.cnr.it '"
<Nicola.Guarino@ladseb.pd.cnr.it>, "'wburkett@pdit.com '"
<wburkett@pdit.com>
cc:
Subject: SUO E-mail Ballot -- Please Acknowledge receipt
ATTN Voting Members of SUO WG,
1. Please immediately acknowledge receipt of this email letter ballot.
If
I
do not receive within 3-days, I will contact you again. We want to make
sure all voting members receive this ballot. The wording of this ballot
was
developed and reviewed by the SUO Policies & Procedures Subgroup.
2. This message is to Ballot the question :
"Should the IEEE P1600.1 Standard Upper Ontology Working Group
commence work on the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO) version 1.15
[June 22, 2001] posted at http://suo.ieee.org/Merge.txt, with the intent
of
developing it into the final SUO document?
Note 1: See background information below for more details.
Note 2: This may be one of several candidate documents to be
combined and aligned into the final SUO document via the consensus
building
process."
3. By 15 Aug '01, please vote YES (comments optional), NO (comments
required), or ABSTAIN (comments optional). Please send your votes and
comments directly to me, but you are also free to post to the SUO list
and
openly discuss this topic.
4. This vote will pass if it receives a majority of YES vs. NO votes.
ABSTAINS and non-votes are not counted in determining majority. The
Chair
may vote to make or break a tie. As all voting members will have
received
and acknowledge receipt of this ballot and will therefore have an
opportunity to vote, there will be no quorum of votes required for this
motion to be determined.
5. Non-voting participants are welcome to express opinions and submit
comments.
6. Background:
a. The purpose of this vote is to determine the level of consensus
we have for focusing work on this document. In other words, we need to
decide if we are going to go down this path or not. A working group may
decide to work on more than one document.
b. The primary purpose of this vote is NOT to propose improvements
to the document, unless they are major enough for you to vote against
focusing work on this document. However, such general improvement
comments
are welcome and will be resolved (but not unless and until the vote
passes,
since there would be no sense resolving comments if the group does not
want
to proceed
with this document.
c. If this vote passes, this document will change from being the
work (and under the control) of a group of individuals to being the work
(and under the control) of the SUO WG. A Technical Editor will be
appointed
or elected, who will incorporate WG-approved changes into the document.
This does not require frequent formal votes for every change. A better
approach
for daily or weekly updates is to develop consensus by resolving
objections,
as we did
when revising the Scope and Purpose. In other words, (1) the Technical
Editor leads the discussion by processing the issues and suggestions;
(2)the
issues/suggestions identify proposed additions, changes, or deletions to
the
wording in the document; (3) the Technical Editor asks the WG for any
objections. Items that do not have clear consensus would be accumulated
for
later, more formal processing, i.e., the proposer of the
issue/suggestion
is
responsible for making a formal proposal (with a WG vote) for the
proposed
change.
Jim Schoening
Chair, SUO WG