Re: SUO: Vote 2001-02: IFF Foundation Ontology
Jim --
I vote YES that the Standard Upper Ontology Working Group commence work
on the IFF Foundation Ontology version 1.0, with the following comments:
1. Over the last months I have become increasingly skeptical about the
enterprise of
standardizing the actual content of a single upper ontology. I believe
that the IFF
Foundation comes closest of anything I've seen to the part of the SUO PAR
that I most
strongly support, which is that "this standard will provide a structure and
a set of general
concepts upon which domain ontologies ... could be constructed."
2. I am strongly on the side of those who advocate a modular approach to
ontologies,
and IFF is fundamentally based on this principle. This modularity needs to
extend even to
the most "meta, generic, abstract, and philosophical" concepts of "upper"
ontology, and
IFF is architected to support this.
3. My main caveat is the quote from the ballot note below, which states:
"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."
I hope that this will be a positive, and not a stultifying arrangement for
the
near-term progress of this document.
4. Overriding the concern above is my expectation that a vote to commence
work on IFF will focus the attention of the working group on understanding
its
structure and the implicit methodology of using it as a framework to
support
modular ontology creation.
Doug McDavid
Certified Executive Consultant
Member of IBM Academy of Technology
mcdavid@us.ibm.com -- 916-549-4600
"Schoening, James R CECOM DCSC4I"
<James.Schoening@mail1.monmouth.army.mil>@majordomo.ieee.org on 08/09/2001
07:46:53 PM
Please respond to "Schoening, James R CECOM DCSC4I"
<James.Schoening@mail1.monmouth.army.mil>
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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