Karen Coyle wrote:
>
> Well, I guess I just don't think we have a way to work with "things
> themselves" in something like SKOS, because the "K" means "knowledge"
> and the "S" means system, that is, somebody's system -- somebody's
> ideas about something.
>
We can assert knowledge about a thing itself, can we not?
Saying that the painting the Mona Lisa was created in the 16th century
is a _different_ assertion then saying that the wikipedia page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa was created on 12 August 2002.
It's pretty important to know if you're saying the painting was created
on 12 August 2002, or the wikipedia page was, right?
The linked data/semantic web community has worked out conventions for
being clear about which of these things (the "thing itself" or a web
page about it) you are referring to in your assertions.
dbpedia has implemented those conventions, providing a way to be clear
about which of those things you are making assertions about. Which can
be easily done in SKOS by simply choosing the proper URI to make
assertions about, there is nothing about SKOS that prevents you from
doing this, people do it all the time with SKOS, I think.
VIAF ignores those conventions, and, based on dbpedia data, makes
assertions about wikipedia pages when it means to be making assertions
about the "things themselves". By using the dbpedia RDF improperly.
Seems pretty clear cut to me.
Jonathan
>
Received on Tue Apr 13 2010 - 15:01:16 EDT