Re: SUO: Vote 2001-02: IFF Foundation Ontology
Yang,
I'm very disappointed in your message. I've tried to answer all your
messages honestly and politely. If you have a specific technical or
procedural concern I'd be happy to address it.
Adam
At 05:35 AM 8/10/2001 -0400, Yang Yun wrote:
>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 ----
>
>
>
>Searching for the best free email? Try MetaCrawler Mail, from the #1
>metasearch service on the Web, http://www.metacrawler.com
Adam Pease
Teknowledge
(650) 424-0500 x571