SUO: Forwarding of Ballot Comments
Bob,
I forward all comments to the list. Straight votes I tabulate, but
don't forward.
Jim
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Grayson Spillers
To: Schoening, James R CECOM DCSC4I
Cc: 'Tim King '; 'standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org '
Sent: 8/29/01 1:49 PM
Subject: Re: SUO: RE: Procedure of development
Jim,
We have not yet seen many of the ballots. Please forward the ballots
(completely and without comment) to the SUO list.
Bob
Schoening, James R CECOM DCSC4I wrote:
Tim and all,
There are no specific rules that govern whether or how comments
are
resolved within a working group. There are such rules at the stage of
formal IEEE ballots, but we're far away from that.
However, it is common practice and very smart to bring structure
to
this process. This will help make sure you haven't missed any comments
and
also assure participants that all comments have been fairly resolved.
It
also helps when the same comment come up again.
However, since we're all volunteers, and we all have limited
resources,
we'll have to do the best we can with the time we have. But some level
of
structure (like a form to submit comments, postings on the web,
numbering
scheme, etc.) may save more time than it costs.
Even though I have done some of this comment resolution in the
past, at
this point I feel the Technical Editor(s) or other volunteers should
handle
this.
Jim Schoening
-----Original Message-----
From: Tim King
To: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
<mailto:standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org>
Sent: 8/28/01 3:21 AM
Subject: SUO: Procedure of development
I request clarification here. As an active participant in ISO standards
development, I would characterise that process as being issues driven.
I can not perceive that it is possible to mandate a level of detail on
the proposed change column of the ballot forms; the editor of the
document has to demonstrate that the issue has been addressed through a
resolution of the issue. Although the difference may only be subtle, is
Adam right to claim that this IEEE activity is driven by change
proposals? This issue begs a supplementary question: is someone
collating all the ballot comments into an issues log that can be
examined at all points in the life history of the developmen
t. This log
should include a unique identifier and the eventual resolution.
I see issues as being user requirements and I expect that many of us
will be using our votes to protect our domain communities from a
standard that fails to address the needs of the users. A subset of the
participants in this mailing list will be capable to produce the robust
solutions that are demanded. These people fail to address all ballot
issues at peril of not converting NO votes into YES.
Cheers,
Tim.
-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Pease [ mailto:apease@ks.teknowledge.com
<mailto:apease@ks.teknowledge.com>
<mailto:apease@ks.teknowledge.com> <mailto:apease@ks.teknowledge.com> ]
Sent: 27 August 2001 15:36
To: John F. Sowa
Cc: West, Matthew R SITI-GREA-UK; Yang Yun;
standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
<mailto:standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org> ; phayes@ai.uwf.edu
<mailto:phayes@ai.uwf.edu>
Subject: Re: SUO: 2000-7-26 example
John,
At 10:06 PM 8/26/2001 -0400, John F. Sowa wrote:
Adam,
My first change proposal is the same one that I recommended
at the SUO workshop at IJCAI.
AP> Absolutely, what is your change proposal (stated as specific
changes to the document)?
Merge Robert Kent's IFF document with the SUMO document.
This is a reasonable recommendation for a task (albeit a big
one), but it
is certainly not a change proposal. Take KIF as an example.
"Include
default reasoning in KIF" would be a recommendation for a
task, and, like
your recommendation for IFF and SUMO, one the success of which is not
guaranteed. On the other hand
change the BNF grammar in line 21, page 15 from
foo ::= bar | baz
to
foo :: bar* | baz | bif
would be a concrete change proposal.
The following point is fine, but my notion of feature is much more
than just an axiom or two here or there.
It could be a substantial change or even a completely new
proposal, but
unless we get down to specifics it's very difficult to make progress.
AP> I think my stance is simply the as you say that "anyone
who proposes
a new
feature has a responsibility
to explain the importance of that feature and why it should be
adopted".
I am writing up a more detailed explanation of the lattice of
theories and its implication for the ontology standards.
I'm not defending SUMO, just requesting that whoever says
something is wrong with it must say precisely what it wrong
(in terms of its terms or axioms), and provide a revision
to the document.
That parenthetical comment is the one I most object to. As I have
said from day one of the SUO effort, I believe that the methodology
for organizing the theories and axioms is far more important than
any particular axioms.
Well, sure methodology is important, but we're not producing
a methodology
as the standard. Even if we accept that the methodology must be done
first, at some point, one still has to specify terms and
axioms. Anyway, I
fear we've been over that ground before.
The urge to write axioms is very much like a programmer's desire
to write code when the overall architecture hasn't been done.
I believe that there is an important amount of work that has been
done on how to organize an ontology in the past 10 years and none
of it has been reflected in SUMO.
"None" is rather strong, especially since many of the
ontologies, if not
all, that we've incorporated, we're built in the last 10 years.
I've been sketching out some
of the ideas in my comments, and Robert K. has been proposing them
in his IFF document. I realize that IFF is at too high a level
of abstraction for the underlying ideas to become apparent, but
I'm trying to bridge that gap.
I see no way to bridge that gap other than actually writing
or changing the
axioms in IFF and SUMO to show how they can be made
compatible. Explanations will help but, just as we can't
create a model
theory for KIF by English prose alone, so is prose also
insufficient in
this case.
Adam
John Sowa
Adam Pease
Teknowledge
(650) 424-0500 x571