Seconded!!

On Mon, Jul 26, 2021 at 12:47 PM Samuel Klein <[email protected]> wrote:

> Wow :)  Thanks for that, Dan!
>
> On Mon, Jul 26, 2021 at 11:43 AM Dan Brickley <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, 26 Jul 2021 at 11:58, Jan Dittrich <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I would be very interested in Wikidatas Relation to Cyc
>>> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc> on one hand and the semantic Web on
>>> the other.
>>>
>>
>> this isn’t written down in one place well, yet
>>
>> Here is one strand of history, emphasising from Cyc via Guha’s later work
>> on MCF.
>>
>> CycL inspired Apple MCF, which got XMLified by Tim Bray when Guha took it
>> Netscape. June ‘97 it was submitted to W3C by Netscape. It combined with
>> requirements from W3C content labeling work (PICS), where there was
>> interest in adding more decentralized expressivity (eg to support Dublin
>> Core and other schemas being combined in one “label”), complex structures
>> and datatyped property values, aka Signed PICS labels and PICS-NG. While
>> PICS and PICS-NG had an s-expression based syntax, RDF (like the 1997
>> iteration of MCF) went with XML. At the time XML was being invented by
>> stripping SGML down into something that might suit the Web. Microsoft
>> submitted XML-Data to W3C mid 97 too (as well as later a revision, breaking
>> W3C etiquette). XML-Data shared some goals with RDF but not its graph data
>> model. RDF and other usecases led to XML Namespaces being an important
>> thing. As XML popularity grew, RDF was under pressure since it didn’t
>> engage much with the SGML heritage. The RDFS WG launched just after the RDF
>> Model + Syntax spec was announced at Dublin Core’s conference in Finland.
>> This being the “browser wars” era both RDF and RDFS were under huge
>> pressure to be completed quickly. RDFS included a small subset of the
>> schema-defining machinery from MCF. The RDF M+S WG produced an RDF
>> recommendation in Feb 1999 but RDFS was left in limbo, in part because the
>> XML community were wary of being forced to build XML Schema on top of it.
>> Meanwhile from 1998 a small but enthusiastic community started to build
>> around RDF - experimenting with query languages, databases, integration
>> with inference engines, APIs etc., alongside continued support from
>> Netscape who used the technology heavily for everything from RSS feeds,
>> sitemaps, “whats related” annotation services, open data (dmoz) dumps, to
>> their own browser’s internal data source APIs (xul templates, bookmarks,
>> mail, ..). On the standards track, W3C management backed off from RDF work
>> to reflect the concerns of its membership, who tended to much prefer XML.
>> Meanwhile the US military research agency DARPA had been persuaded by an
>> academic turned staffer (Jim Hendler) who had worked on similar early
>> technology (SHOE, PIQ) that they should fund research to standardize a
>> DARPA Agent Markup Language. A DAML / W3C collaboration led to the
>> RDF-oriented W3C team at MIT receiving DARPA funding to continue the work
>> area that had not engaged the XML-centric interest of W3C’s membership (ie
>> Advisory Committee). Alongside this, RDF/S had engaged the interests of
>> European researchers working around logic-based KR languages, eg f-logic,
>> description logics etc., resulting in DAML (US) and OIL (description logic
>> EU research project outcomes) collaborating via adhoc transatlantic
>> committee to produce DAML+OIL, a first draft of a more complicated language
>> that sat on top of RDF. The W3C MIT DARPA funding supported a “Semantic Web
>> Advanced Development” activity that operated in the grey around of W3C’s
>> “non member-funded activity”, and which served in particular to bring
>> DAML+OIL into W3C as new work item. This next phase of RDF work at W3C was
>> broadly in line with the RDF roadmap and expectations from the 1997
>> Metadata Activity, but rebranded “Semantic Web” to reflect several
>> considerations. Firstly that RDF was clearly more powerful and expressive
>> than a simple metadata format might need. Secondly, by this point RDF was
>> pretty unpopular in several contexts - and seen as draining staff resources
>> and attention from W3C membership priorities (XML, Web Services, etc.).
>> Renaming from RDF allowed a fresh start. Calling it Semantic Web tied into
>> Tim-BL’s interest and writing in the area, had more “visionary” feel,
>> allowing for a message that it was a longer term investigation, therefore
>> not a competitor to XML Schema, SOAP, Xquery and so on. So now we had PICS
>> and MCF having mutated into RDF/S for graph data, and then simultaneously a
>> rebranding of the exercise as Semantic Web, with a big dose of “futuristic”
>> and “researchy”. Conferences and journals and such started to appear,
>> initially with much more focus on the “semantics” part, rather than the
>> “web”. This was the cause for the second great half-hearted renaming, which
>> grew from the growing split between those of us who were in this for
>> web-based data sharing, integration, feeds, sitemaps, rss, foaf etc and so
>> on, and those who were more “semantics first”, with a passion for finding
>> efficient subsets of Description Logic. Around the mid-2000s the earlier
>> experimental RDF query languages solidified into SPARQL, which was broadly
>> in the “data access” side of the community. This is another place that the
>> Cyc and MCF heritage showed up, since most practical RDF systems had a
>> notion of source or context attached at the triple of graph level,
>> corresponding to the notion of “layers” in MCF (and very loosely with cyc
>> contexts). So this kind of takes us to the time when we had rdf/s, owl,
>> skos, sparql … and things like dbpedia and the lod cloud were refining the
>> data-linking “hypertext rdf” work we’d started in the FOAF project, with a
>> TimBL-fueled passion for every entity being given a URI that can serve up
>> RDF when dereferenced. A good amount of public open datasets were published
>> this way, although applications and usage tended to lag. This brings us to
>> the era of rich snippets, Google acquiring Freebase, renaming it Knowledge
>> Graph and then stepping back from the role that Wikidata was more effective
>> at filling…
>>
>>
>> Ok that was a giant biased brain dump, but i think mostly true, and about
>> 25 years underdocumented history squeezed into a paragraph
>>
>> Dan
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Jan
>>>
>>> Am Fr., 23. Juli 2021 um 01:57 Uhr schrieb Denny Vrandečić <
>>> [email protected]>:
>>>
>>>> Hi Thad,
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for asking the questions, and thanks Tobi for the pointers. Man,
>>>> what a lengthy post it was.
>>>>
>>>> I understand that the post answered most of your questions. I think
>>>> that it is entirely possible to layer a prototype semantics over Wikidata,
>>>> just as the DL semantics have been layered over it. I don't remember if
>>>> such work has been done before.
>>>>
>>>> Regarding ISO 5964, I think I probably have looked through it at some
>>>> point, but I don't remember it anymore. SKOS has certainly been a stronger
>>>> influence, and obviously OWL.
>>>>
>>>> I hope that helps with the historical deep dive :) Lydia and I really
>>>> should write that book!
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Denny
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Jul 10, 2021 at 3:00 PM Thad Guidry <[email protected]>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> *Tobi - *That blog post 3 is very helpful.  It shows that Denny and I
>>>>> think alike and agree on everything. :-)  His dislike for strong
>>>>> classification.
>>>>> Which is part of my basis, to allow weak relations much more.  And use
>>>>> them.  But how to allow them, and I think the only way is through
>>>>> properties based on the Data Model currently.
>>>>> There are many ways, and SKOS is one way to allow expressing weak
>>>>> relations and we already have some good support with existing properties
>>>>> like P4390 mapping relation type
>>>>> <https://www.wikidata.org/entity/P4390> and a host of others.
>>>>>
>>>>> Denny and I also fear the same things, like not having a flexible
>>>>> enough system to describe our complex world that doesn't always fit into
>>>>> strict rules.  Which is kinda why I've always liked
>>>>> https://www.w3.org/TR/skos-primer/#secassociative
>>>>> because of it's non-transitivity which allows much flexibility and as
>>>>> he and I would say... avoid "Barbara". :-)
>>>>> Which is pretty much summarized in
>>>>> https://www.w3.org/TR/skos-primer/#secadvanced
>>>>>
>>>>> Sorry for all the SKOS links but semantic relations helps to describe
>>>>> human knowledge.  How a system represents or portrays semantic relations 
>>>>> is
>>>>> where choices are made or have been made.  *And I think the right
>>>>> choices were definitely made.*
>>>>> Overlaying SKOS and the Wikidata properties that sprinkle it into the
>>>>> data model is useful, but I've always been kind of reluctant to do
>>>>> that...probably for the same reasons Denny might give?  Choices between
>>>>> allowing "semantic accuracy" versus "semantic flexibility".  But I think
>>>>> systems like SKOS provide both.  Perhaps it could be argued that OWL
>>>>> provides much less. :-)  Still all KOSs provide great use when they fit
>>>>> well.  How they can fit over Wikidata, as I said, is probably only through
>>>>> properties at this late stage of design and that's fine with me!
>>>>>
>>>>> Still, my main focus is and always will be trying to add human
>>>>> knowledge about concept relations into Wikidata to help machines, to help
>>>>> us.  (the "edges" that humans quickly can deduce in seconds, but still to
>>>>> this day can sometimes take machines days or weeks to figure out).
>>>>>
>>>>> My usage and help to Abstract Wikipedia and Wikidata later on will
>>>>> primarily be around the mapping of relations ... where a lot of the
>>>>> possibilities have already been described years and years ago at the very
>>>>> bottom of this long page:
>>>>> *inter-KOS mapping relationships  <-- *very last row, 3rd column
>>>>> https://www.w3.org/TR/skos-primer/#seccorrespondencesISO
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> *Denny - * were you part of or lightly influenced by ISO 5964 through
>>>>> Germany ISO DIN or not .. that also would be good to know.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thad
>>>>> https://www.linkedin.com/in/thadguidry/
>>>>> https://calendly.com/thadguidry/
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Sat, Jul 10, 2021 at 3:17 PM Tobi Gritschacher <
>>>>> [email protected]> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It would be nice to have a place to look with a link to a page in the
>>>>>>> Community portal that says "History of Wikidata's design and early
>>>>>>> collected meetings, notes, design documents, recordings"
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Might not answer your concrete question, but here are some (very)
>>>>>> early blog posts by Denny. They are still a nice read. :)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 1/3
>>>>>> https://blog.wikimedia.de/2013/02/22/restricting-the-world/
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 2/3
>>>>>> https://newwwblog.wikimedia.de/2013/06/04/on-truths-and-lies/
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 3/3
>>>>>> https://blog.wikimedia.de/2013/09/12/a-categorical-imperative/
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Cheers, Tobi
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> Wikidata mailing list -- [email protected]
>>>>>> To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
>>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> Wikidata mailing list -- [email protected]
>>>>> To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> Wikidata mailing list -- [email protected]
>>>> To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Jan Dittrich
>>> UX Design/ Research
>>>
>>> Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. | Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 | 10963 Berlin
>>> <https://www.google.com/maps/search/Tempelhofer+Ufer+23-24+%7C+10963+Berlin?entry=gmail&source=g>
>>> Tel. (030) 219 158 26-0
>>> https://wikimedia.de
>>>
>>> Unsere Vision ist eine Welt, in der alle Menschen am Wissen der
>>> Menschheit teilhaben, es nutzen und mehren können. Helfen Sie uns dabei!
>>> https://spenden.wikimedia.de
>>>
>>> Wikimedia Deutschland — Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
>>> Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
>>> der Nummer 23855 B. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
>>> Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikidata mailing list -- [email protected]
>>> To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikidata mailing list -- [email protected]
>> To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
>>
>
>
> --
> Samuel Klein          @metasj           w:user:sj          +1 617 529 4266
> _______________________________________________
> Wikidata mailing list -- [email protected]
> To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]
>
-- 
David McDonell Co-founder & CEO ICONICLOUD, Inc. "Illuminating the cloud"
M: 703-864-1203 EM: [email protected] URL: http://iconicloud.com
_______________________________________________
Wikidata mailing list -- [email protected]
To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected]

Reply via email to