membership request (was Re: Vocabulary: Ontology)

[Rob Seaman]

Apparently being subscribed to this mailing list is not sufficient to  
be able to regard oneself as a member of the WG.  Many of us joined  
both the UCD science and technical boards when they were formed; one  
might have thought that these were considered to be subclassed from  
the WG.

> If you are interested in actively participating in the IVOA  
> workgroup about semantics, please contact Andrea Preite Martinez.

Andrea, please consider my application tendered - is there a hazing  
ritual?  Other folks reading this might want to consult the list on:

	http://www.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/IvoaSemantics

to see if a similar request is necessary/desired for themselves.

I don't see any Semantics WG activities associated with the upcoming  
InterOp:

	http://ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/InterOpSep2007

(There were two sessions in Beijing - perhaps all issues are deemed  
resolved?  :-)

Maybe I misunderstand the labeling of the agenda.  Otherwise, when is  
the next meeting of the group?  We could likely make space in the  
agenda of either the VOEvent BoF or VOEvent session in Cambridge for  
a discussion/vote along the lines of proposals/discussions such as  
below:

Honored-guest Matthew points out:

> I've been thinking about this lately and I believe that one of the  
> reasons that astronomy is behind other sciences in this field is  
> that we are actually taxonomically challenged. In spite of our  
> extensive history, we do not have the depth or rigidity of  
> classification that, for example, biology, chemistry or  
> crystallography has. This means that our definitions are fuzzier  
> and actually more akin to arts semantics (e.g. book genres) than  
> science. Maybe we should be looking more at what's happening in  
> these fields than those where there are families, species and  
> subspecies.

Honored-guest Bernard offers a very illuminating example:

> I've developped this example in detail to show that data bases  
> defined a priori on completelely different structures and  
> ontologies can a posteriori be linked by RDF glue, while keeping  
> there separate ontologies and identifying schemes.

Honored-guest Rick suggests:

> Given the beauty of these examples and the trivial means of  
> exchanging formats within our VOcabulary proposal, can't we _by the  
> meeting this month_ (InterOp)
>
> 	- replace all the XML/Schema in the "Note" aka "Working Draft",  
> substituting trivially a simple SKOS/RDF equivalent (see my toy  
> example at http://www.astro.physik.uni-goettingen.de/~hessman/rdf  
> which I'm sure you can all quickly improve upon) and publish it as  
> a true proposal with working examples like UCD, AOIM, A&A,... (easy  
> - can be done in a day;
>
> 	- suggest that the IVOA accept this simple, nearly totally  
> globally-standardized SKOS/RDF format/subset/extension as the  
> recommended format for all VO vocabularies like UCD, AOIM, .....  
> (after all, SKOS/RDF is already defined, there shouldn't be much to  
> discuss if we can agree we're publishing a list of tokens with a  
> minimal amount of RDF baggage);
>
> 	- provide a draft Standard Vocabulary in SKOS/RDF (easy - can be  
> done in a day on the basis of our draft list) which VO applications  
> _could_ use as their fundamental basis RIGHT NOW and, when  
> accepted, _should_ use.  We can bicker about the details later.
>
> Please, all of you say "yes and you'll receive a modificed "Note"  
> with working examples in the mail tomorrow.

Honored-member Tony says:

> The point I was making is that this is a *private* document and not  
> one
> which belongs to the working group. The wg has not decided it wants a
> vocabulary document (or anything at all at this point) and if/when  
> it does
> so decide, it will first debate the format in which it wants that  
> vocabulary
> and then will start work on that document.
>
> If the wg decides that a Note which a person or group has submitted  
> is a
> useful starting point for a WD then it can ask that the Note be  
> copied to a
> WD document with the appropriate heading changes.
>
> These documents are Notes only and should be written and posted as  
> such. A
> WD can only be created when the wg decides that it wants one after  
> suitable
> discussion.

In passing, I might point out that the VOEvent use case is distinct  
from the DBpedia one we've been tossing around.  VOEvent is precisely  
a tool for clarifying what the taxonomy is, not solely a retrieval  
component in the quasi-static federated VO archives.  When phenomena  
are first discovered and thus still unknown, they are paradoxically  
most in need of classification/typing/binning/pigeon-holing/ 
ontologizing/naming.

Rob Seaman
NOAO