Dear Maximilian,
This makes sense to me, but I do not agree with your recommendation as a
general rule.
There is a fundamental epistemological problem, which has nothing to do
with quantitative evidence. The latter,
by the way, cannot detect an endless recursion anyhow, because people
would break it.
The ramifications of this breaking are huge, as can be seen by your answer.
Let us start with a more fundamental construct, a simple CRM-compatible
"knowledge graph" with one attribute:
"Martin" has residence "Heraklion".
Using an E13,
"Martin" performed "Attr.Ass.512". has type: "has residence"
assigned: "Heraklion"
assigned to: "Martin"
now reading it, I know the knowledge graph wants to make me believe who
said "has residence", but I do not know, who introduced these three more
attributes.
So, I reify the three new attributes with 9 more, and I am still not
wiser, nor will I be with any other iteration of it.
If I know that the knowledge graph *was produced by Martin as a trusted
source as a whole*, I do not need the E13 in it.
Then, I can add metadata to the whole knowledge graph, e.g., as a Named
Graph or "context" or on paper etc. , but I am
still in the same situation: who produced these metadata, are they trusted?
Hence, I conclude three things:
a) There is no completely self-descriptive information. The trusted
source ("sender of the message" in Claude Shannon's sense) lies outside
the information unit. It must always be the default. In order to
characterize the default, we need semantics different from E13.
b) It makes no sense to describe the default in the graph itself.
c) Any description within a set of information about its provenance
pushes the level where the default applies up to the next source of
source. Hence, if a team decides to register actions of their members,
the team as a whole pushes the default up to the trust in the
registration, rather than in the primarily registered. I see all you
examples as practices of this kind. There may be many reasons to do
this, but in other cases also not to do it.
Such a rule cannot replace understanding the basic epistemology, which
is always the same.
Does that make sense:-)?
All the best,
Martin
On 3/24/2018 12:10 PM, Maximilian Schich wrote:
Dear Florian and all,
Based on quantitative evidence, I'd object to the following to part of your
suggestion:
"This fact must not individually be registered for all instances of properties
provided by the maintaining team, because it*/would result in an endless recursion/* of
whose opinion was the description of an opinion."
=> This would only be correct if the maintaining team would add additional E13 Attribute Assignments to their own E13 statements. Otherwise,*/in practice, the data would (a) more or less double, plus (b) a
non-exploding truncated tail of additional E13 correction statements/**/, where the maintaining team corrects itself./*
=> Example for (a): In large data sets such as the "Census of Antique Works of Art and
Architecture" the "record history" approximately doubles the data set as a whole. Note: The
Census "record history" is the place where the maintaining team records their own E13-like/attribute
//assertions /(aka/assertions of database record authorship/). It is important to point out that the record
history, where an internal database curator implicitly claims authorship for say an artist attribution in the
Census, is conceptually in no way different from an external author providing a differing opinion (both usually
have PhDs in art history). Ergo there are two default cases: (1) The internal database curator claims authorship
for a*/direct assertion/* via a single E13 Attribute assignment in the record history; (2) The internal
database curator claims authorship for a*/cited assertion/* via an E13 attribute assignment in the record
history on top of the*/original assertion/* that connects the stated opinion to its external source via another
E13 attribute assignment.
=> Example for (b): In large data sets where the multiplicity of opinion is
recorded, the number of competing assertions including both record history and
external opinions, is usually characterized by a tailed frequency distribution*.
This usually means in practice that the data set stays in the same order of
magnitude relative to the case where the maintaining team decides to follow one of
the alternative assertions.**
* The frequency distributions would look similar to Schich 2010 "Revealing
Matrices" Fig. 14-8. Indeed, my pre-publication version of this figure had a column
for the record history, not included in the article, as the networks were too large for
the preceding figure.
** Yes, we should expect some "assertion cascades" to be exceedingly large, but we can
also expect the median cascade length being very short, between 1 and 2 in cultural heritage
databases based on personal experience, and still short in very large scale cases, such as
spreading rumors on the Web (cf. Friggeri et al. 2014 "Rumour cascades" Fig. 5).
=> The recommendation, in my opinion, should be:*/By default, the maintaining team should establish authorship by
adding an E13 Attribute Assignment to each assertion in the data set.
Yet, the maintaining team should _only_ add an E13 Attribute
Assignment to their own E13 Attribute Assignments in the case of
discernible modifications, updates, or corrections. To avoid comment
cascades, such alternative E13 statements should be done in /**/*/parallel(!) not recursively.***/* This recommended procedure
establishes a record history and granular ability to cite data set
contributions by author, yet also avoids a recursive explosion of E13
statements./*
*** Parallel, means E13 statements in the internal record history should never
be about statements in the record history itself. This can easily be maintained
with users being logged in or recorded via IP and timestamp. Working example:
The Wikipedia edit history.
Hope this makes sense.
Best, Max
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