Re: SUO: Vote 2001-02: IFF Foundation Ontology
Date August 2001
- Received 2001-02: IFF Foundation Ontology
- I vote YES that this group should commence work on IFF Foundation
Ontology.
Comments:
Category theory is the dominant underpinning to formal semantics
over the past 30 years. The IFF proposal shows KIF used as a
bridge from the elegance of theory to practical applications.
I volunteer to assist in independently machine checking and
testing the IFF.
- Regarding SUM0, I vote NO.
Comments:
It is embarrassing that this group has been so easily manipulated
into accepting SUM0 as a 'fait accompli' on the basis of a few web
pages evangelising it as the SUO website's ontology-in-residence.
At the SWWS01, some papers mistook SUMO as an adopted IEEE
standard!
The SUO secretary might like to set the record straight there?
No initial conditions are given as to why the KIF statements input
to the merge were chosen. Personal taste was the criterion offered
by several people involved!
Indeed it seems mainly to be inherited from a prior ANSI KIF mafia
committee, unrelated to this one? The standards process
is notoriously antidemocratic and corrupt, because of the rewards
to those 'winning' junk standards recognition, and SUO shouldn't
be seen to be going there. Already Teknowledge has at every
opportunity trumpeted its "IEEE SUO Standard" horn.
My ad hoc attempts to bring them to account for this have
been dismissed as a 'misunderstanding', or arrogantly denied.
If the benefits of SUM0 are there, I'm sure the IEEE
publications would've picked up on that. Instead, IEEE's vast body
of knowledge on best practices of knowledge engineering was
completely ignored in determining the SUO website's
ontology-in-residence.
No methodology for the merge has ever been documented. Instead, the
SUMO evangelists arrogantly use 'spin' to deflect the criticism!
Immaculate conception is counter to every principle of the IEEE,
and its certainly embarassing that anyone would try and rush
through a 'flavor of the month' ontology as an IEEE standard
with barely enough documentation (docustrings) to distinguish it
from a mere list of buzzwords. Their methodology could best be
described as "information loss". Not even one FCA-style analysis
was presented!
A test of the SUM0 classification in a specific domain showed it
raises many more problems than it solves. The problems with the
Units of Measure subontology were raised, only to be dismissed in
the 'spin' and forgotten by our evangelists-in-residence.
What's the payoff to rushing off to Adamstown?
The SUM0 evangelists have declined to speculate about the Total
Cost of Ownership of a typical SUO user were they to rely on
Teknowledge for all future support of SUM0. At least Cyc has
promised to open source a one-week cyclist training course with
their OpenCyc effort. Round trip ticket to
Jurassic Park not included.
My objective is to promote adoption of formal methods in the IT
industry, and I see the hype and urgency surrounding SUM0's
flavor-of-the-month approach as a typical AI sales strategy.
A lot of effort could be diverted to hacking SUM0 to be
buzzword-compliant that could be better used to build a bridge
to the formal semantics body of knowledge, and getting people
talking and agreeing on a more pregnant toolkit across subject
areas - probably based on category theory which has been
the most productive theoretical approach for the past 30 years.
Murray Bent
yangyun@ieee.org
---- Begin Original Message ----
From: "Schoening, James R CECOM
DCSC4I"<James.Schoening@mail1.monmouth.army.mil>
Sent: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 22:46:53 -0400
To: "'standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org'"<standard-upper-
ontology@ieee.org>
Subject: SUO: Vote 2001-02: IFF Foundation Ontology
ATTN Voting Members of the SUO WG,
1. Please immediately acknowledge receipt of this email letter
ballot. If I
do not receive such acknowledgement within 5 days, I will contact you
again.
We want to make sure all voting members receive this ballot.
2. This message is to ballot the question, as proposed by Robert Kent:
"Should the IEEE P1600.1 Standard Upper Ontology Working Group
commence work
on the IFF Foundation Ontology version 1.0 [July 20, 2001] posted at
http://suo.ieee.org/Kent-IFF.pdf, with the intent of developing it
into the
final SUO document?
Note 1: See the background information below for more details.
Note 2: This may be one of several candidate documents, any one of
which may
become the final SUO document, or may be combined and aligned into
the final
SUO document via the consensus building process. No one candidate
document
will have preferential status relative to the others."
3. By Thursday, August 30, 2001, please vote YES (comments optional),
NO(comments required), or ABSTAIN (comments optional). Votes should
be sent
directly to me (to reduce list traffic), but please post your comments
directly to the list so they have a chance to be resolved. Comments
sent to
me will be forwarded to the SUO list.
4. Per the SUO Chair's interpretation of Robert's Rules of Order
(with input
from members of the SUO P&P Subgroup), the following items will be
followed:
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
acknowledged 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. None of these items are considered to be changes to
existing
policies and procedures, only interpretations.
5. Non-voting participants are welcome to express opinions and submit
comments to the SUO list.
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
---- End Original Message ----
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