SUO: RE: SUO starter document
Nicola,
The message volume has not been the cause of our lack of progress,
it has just filled the void. Our problem has been lack of something to
focus on. Only one starter document has been proposed and the group did not
accept it (though it did pass in a straw poll).
Others have posted work, as you have, but have not been willing to
actually propose it as a group effort, probably because they didn't have the
time or resources to champion it any further. This is understandable, but a
standard will only be developed if it has a core group willing to champion
it all the way.
Unless we have this key ingredient, no measure of good management
will lead this group to success.
Jim
-----Original Message-----
From: Nicola Guarino [mailto:Nicola.Guarino@ladseb.pd.cnr.it]
Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2001 3:20 PM
To: Schoening, James R CECOM DCSC4I
Subject: Re: SUO starter document
At 6:10 PM -0400 21/5/01, Schoening, James R CECOM DCSC4I wrote:
>Nicola,
>
> Have you given any further thought to submitting any of your work as
>a starter document for SUO. As you know, the group needs one or more
>documents to focus its efforts on.
Dear James,
The paper we have submitted to the IJCAI SUO Workshop (which
will be presented at the IJCAI ws on ontologies) cannot be intended
as a starter ontology, but can certainly be considered among the
starter documents. There is no attempt to be complete, though. A
preliminary version of our IKF reference ontology is scheduled by the
end of this year, and we should able to announce a preliminary
top-level before Summer.
A further (indirect) contribution is my recent review of
Sowa's book and especially his top-level ontology. Since the current
merged ontology is based on it, this is implicitly a criticism to the
merged ontology. I have no time for an open, endless discussion on
this, but I will certainly welcome specific, focused observations.
In the meanwhile, our own contribution to the SUO initiative
will necessarily be very limited, mainly because of the fact that
this group hasn't been able to implement a strict issue-based
discussion methodology, nor the "bookshelf of results" proposed in
the past by Mike Uschold and myself. To me, the inhability of
achieving this and the lack of control of out-of-focus discussions on
the list reveals a serious failure of this initiative. This is also
the reason of my abstension regarding the Chair elections.
A further reason of disappointment is the way the IEEE SUO
workshop has been managed. Still I don't know how many papers have
been submitted and selected. I suspect that ours was the only paper.
This could have been a useful opportunity to force people to condense
their proposals in papers, but apparently it didn't work.
That's it, for now. I will be more active when this list will
be more efficient, and when a list of issues and proposals, with
defenders and opponents for each of them, will be posted on the Web
site. I know it is difficult, but it is the only way to proceed.
Best wishes,
-- Nicola
P.S.: I am answering to you only since you sent me a personal
message; I encourage you to forward this to the whole list, however.
---------------------------------
Nicola Guarino
National Research Council phone: +39 O49 8295751
LADSEB-CNR fax: +39 O49 8295763
Corso Stati Uniti, 4 email: Nicola.Guarino@ladseb.pd.cnr.it
I-35127 Padova
Italy
http://www.ladseb.pd.cnr.it/infor/ontology/ontology.html
(***updated 21/5/2001 ***)