RE: SUO: Unanimous consent
At 10:56 AM 8/29/2003 +0100, West, Matthew R SITI-ITPSIE wrote:
>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.
>>
Yes, that's exactly what I was saying above, i.e., there are no acceptance criteria. I have ignorance regarding the acceptance criteria and am therefore incapable of responding to a request to grant unanimous consent to accepting your document as a starter document .
My point here is not that your document is somehow lacking, it is that I have no criteria by which to determine whether or not it is. I'd support what Jay Halcomb and you both seem to be suggesting, i.e., that we take this opportunity to articulate some acceptance criteria and progression expectations regarding starter documents.
>> 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.
>>
This is helpful.
>
>> ><snip>
>>
>>