Rationale behind omission of events from UMBEL?

[akshay bhat]

Can someone please explain why events from Cyc are not included in
UMBEL Subject concepts?
I think it is a serious drawback.

[Mike Bergman]

Hi Akshay,

Well, it may be a serious drawback, but it is on purpose and a
part of the UMBEL design.

UMBEL was merely designed to be a lightweight subject reference
structure for what Web content "is about". The selection of the
20 K concepts and use of SKOS was also based on this purpose.

Thus, there is no intent for UMBEL to be a "comprehensive"
ontology with event and "parts of" vocabulary, among other
possible design choices.

The overlap with Cyc is maintained to provide a pathway for those
that want more expressiveness.

Think of UMBEL as a subject topic "router" for the Internet, but
one that also provides reach through to Cyc. If neither of these
purposes meet your needs, you likely need to look for another
ontology.

Regards, Mike

[akshay bhat]

On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 5:24 AM, Mike Bergman <mi...@mkbergman.com> wrote:

Hi Akshay,

Well, it may be a serious drawback, but it is on purpose and a
part of the UMBEL design.

UMBEL was merely designed to be a lightweight subject reference
structure for what Web content "is about".

An event for example"Marriage" is more likely to be part of subject
reference rather than vocabulary.
I was assuming that UMBEL was more like a stripped down version of Cyc ontology which could at least be used for say tagging website with there nature.

 The selection of the
20 K concepts and use of SKOS was also based on this purpose.

Thus, there is no intent for UMBEL to be a "comprehensive"
ontology with event and "parts of" vocabulary, among other
possible design choices.

The overlap with Cyc is maintained to provide a pathway for those
that want more expressiveness.

Think of UMBEL as a subject topic "router" for the Internet, but
one that also provides reach through to Cyc.  If neither of these
purposes meet your needs, you likely need to look for another
ontology.

Regards, Mike

Thanks

akshay bhat wrote:
> Can someone please explain why events from Cyc are not included in
> UMBEL Subject concepts?
> I think it is a serious drawback.
>
> >
>

--
Akshay Uday Bhat.
c.e.f.y.
department of chemical engineering
university institute of chemical technology
mumbai India

"One has the ability and privilege to do one's respective duty, but has no control over the
results. The fruits of work should not be the motive, for they shall follow one's actions"
Bhagvad Gita, (2.47)

[Jack Park]

Hi Akshay,

You say:

> An event for example"Marriage" is more likely to be part of subject
> reference rather than vocabulary.

I'm quite interested to tease out of you the meaning of "subject
reference". That's because I see representation of subjects along
several dimensions, one of which is "subject identity".

Let me explain...

Subject identity can be established in many different ways, one of
which is to associate a representation of a subject with a particular
URI, as is done in RDF. We could ask: is that enough? The correct
answer is probably: "sometimes, but not always". If everybody knows
the URI, just use it. But, how would anyone know that, say,
http://example.com/people/akshay is the identifier associated with
you? And what if different entities assign different URIs to the same
subject? And, how does Joe Sixpack ever learn your identity if that
URI is all that's available?

To fill in some gaps, we turn to attributes (aka: properties) of
subjects. Some identity properties can come from facts such as birth
dates, locations, and so forth, but others come from relationships,
e.g. marriage, books written, and so forth.

I'm very interested to understand what insight you bring to UMBEL when
you talk about "subject reference" and 'vocabulary". How do those
terms fit in the representation of subjects?

Many thanks
Jack