RE: SUO: Unanimous consent
Dear Mike,
See comments below.
Matthew West
Principal Consultant
Shell Information Technology International Limited
Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA, United Kingdom
Tel: +44 20 7934 4490 Other Tel: +44 7796 336538
Email: matthew.west@shell.com
Internet: http://www.shell.com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mike Pool [mailto:mpool@iet.com]
> Sent: 28 August 2003 19:37
> To: West, Matthew R SITI-ITPSIE; Pierre Grenon
> Cc: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> Subject: RE: SUO: Unanimous consent
>
>
> Matthew,
>
> A few comments below.
>
> Mike Pool
>
> At 04:43 PM 8/28/2003 +0100, West, Matthew R SITI-ITPSIE wrote:
>
> >Dear Pierre,
> >
> >See comments below.
> >
> >
> >Matthew West
> >Principal Consultant
> >Shell Information Technology International Limited
> >Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA, United Kingdom
> >
> >Tel: +44 20 7934 4490 Other Tel: +44 7796 336538
> >Email: matthew.west@shell.com
> >Internet: http://www.shell.com
> >
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Pierre Grenon [mailto:pierre.grenon@ifomis.uni-leipzig.de]
> >> Sent: 28 August 2003 15:20
> >> To: West, Matthew R SITI-ITPSIE
> >> Cc: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
> >> Subject: RE: SUO: Unanimous consent
> >>
> >>
> >> Dear Matthew,
> >>
> >> First let me sacrifice to good understanding practices and
> >> let me emphasize
> >> that I did not intend to judge of the quality of this
> >> material. The main point
> >> is probably and unfortunately again procedural. I see no
> >> reason to reject any
> >> offer to consider any material while working on a starter
> >> document in order to
> >> improve it. This is how I received your first post (as, due
> >> to email troubles,
> >> I hadn't yet yesterday received a statement of a motion).
> >
> >MW: This was Jim's interpretation of my original post.
> >
> >> But your suggestion has been moved to a motion and the
> >> material to be discussed
> >> as a potential starter on a par with SUMO and OpenCyc, in my
> >> understanding. And
> >> for this purpose, as you hinted yourself, the material is
> >> immature.
> >
> >MW: As far as maturity goes, this work is part of a stream
> >that goes back at least 15 years - which puts it on a par
> >with CYC, and somewhat ahead of SUMO. However, it is not as
> >completely axiomatised - which is a different question.
>
> Please, it should be obvious that Pierre wasn't referring to
> the age of the effort, that just seems like an odd way to
> understand 'maturity'. Age is neither necessary nor
> sufficient for maturity even they are highly correlated.
>
MW: I was being facetious, sorry.
>
> >MW: It is not clear to me that any particular degree of
> >completeness is required for a starter document. Pretty
> >much by definition a starter document is not finished. In ISO
> >where I am used to the way things work, you can make a New
> >Work Item Proposal with either a statement of the intended
> >work area, or with anything up to a finished document. The
> >only thing that is important is to be clear about what you
> >have as a start point and where you are going. I think I
> >meet those criteria. As far as I can see the main reason
> >to make a proposal is to try to gather support (and possibly
> >effort) around doing some work.
>
>
> This is a very good point. I have no idea what the criteria
> are for deeming something to be an acceptable starting
> document for SUO work. If I submit a gif graphic of John
> Sowa's upper ontology diagram from his Knowledge
> Representation book, is that adequate as a starter document?
> I once thought that "SUO starter document" meant that the
> submitted document could be envisioned as a reasonable first
> draft of a SUO. But I think it means something else now,
> although I'm not sure what. Or perhaps it means nothing at
> all because we're just going to have a big registry and let
> the market decide or something, i.e., there are no criteria
> for anything being included in the registry accept being
> willing to have something in the registry. I'd be more
> inclined to embrace your vision (or the ISO's) of a starting
> document (in which case it would be nice if we could get more
> information from the SUMO, Cyc and IFF people as to where
> they think they're going.) but I didn't know that that was
> the one we were using.
MW: You may recall I was originally asking about how we should
proceed. It was Jim's suggestion that this should be taken
as a proposal for a starter document - which is fine by me -
as would be just saying here is some material to be worked into
the IFF proposal John Sowa made.
>
>
>
> >> I would
> >> have seen no reason to vote on accepting this as an expert
> >> contribution and
> >> certainly no reason to reject this. As a starter, I would
> be much more
> >> cautious.
> >
> >MW: I think there are two key issues to consider here:
> >
> >1. Should there be a 4D ontology as part of the SUO work?
> >
> >2. Is this a good start point? (if not suggest a better one)
>
> Of course, a really helpful critique offers a solution to the
> shortcomings it points out. But there's no obligation on
> someone who rejects yours as a good starting point to come up
> with a better one is there? What if someone argues that an
> adequate 4D ontology requires a great deal of sophisticated
> axiomatization, and hence declines to produce a better one,
> but notes some possible fundamental flaws in your approach
> that could impede that axiomatization?
MW: Yes, and then I can accept or reject the critique. I reject
the presumption that a candidate document needs to be fully or
at least mostly axiomatised.
>
>
> >> In my humble opinion, the way to proceed would be to withdraw
> >> the motion and
> >> simply register the material linked in a couple of your
> >> messages (browser and
> >> flat file) as expert contribution. Then, after you have done
> >> the work of
> >> turning this into an axiomatized full fledge ontology
> >> comprable to SUMO or
> >> OpenCyc, it seems to me that this could be an interesting
> >> candidate for a
> >> starter and that a motion could be submitted at that later time.
> >
> >MW: I would rather have an indication of support, and perhaps some
> >help doing it.
>
> Yes, but if being accepted as a starter document simply means
> that we've agreed to throw your work into the registry but
> carries no approbation beyond that, what's the point?
MW: Well it means precisely that. How else does material get in?
> Our
> acceptance wouldn't really be an indicator of support then or
> at least it wouldn't be clear whether acceptance was based on
> the quality of the product or the loosening of the acceptance
> criteria.
MW: What acceptance criteria? We only each have our own opinion.
>
> That said, I'm all for the idea of putting this "working"
> group to work and getting volunteers working on producing SUO
> candidates. Is it necessary that your candidate be accepted
> as a starting document before we could do that?
MW: My interpretation of what making something a starter document
is only that a stream of work based around some initial material
is considered to be a work stream of this group, contributing to
its aims, and under its control.
>
> ><snip>
>
>