On 1/2/12 3:02 AM, Patrick Cassidy wrote:
> Michael,
>     Thanks for the reference and comment.  That does answer part of the
> question I had.
>     This still leaves me wondering whether the DBpedia ontology is being
> intentionally kept small (rather than representing all of the classes
> described in Wikipedia) for performance reasons, or because the effort of
> trying to make the ontology accurate while expanding it substantially is too
> large for the existing team.  If the latter, perhaps I can help in that
> task.  If there are performance issues, I would like to get more detail to
> see just how serious an expansion of the ontology would be for the existing
> usages.
>
>     The other issue raised by the discussion in the FAQ at the GoodRelations
> page you cited is - just what should the semantics of a Wikipedia article
> be?  At present, the "type" relation is used, and that make it appear odd
> for traditional ontology structure, when the Wikipedia article describes a
> class of things rather than an individual.  It seems (to me) that it would
> be more appropriate to use a relation of the type "isaDiscussionOf" (where
> the main topic of the article is exactly the same as the intended class of
> the Wikipedia), or "isaDiscussionOfaSubtypeOf" where there is no
> corresponding DBpedia ontology entry for that class, but the class described
> can be related to a broader class in the ontology.  The "type" relation
> might still be used, but to be consistent with the notion of Wikipedia
> articles being discussions rather than the individuals described it might be
> better to use a relation such as "isDiscussionOfanInstanceOf" to point to
> the class of the entity discussed.  Then, the articles would all have the
> semantics of articles rather than of the entities described by the articles.
>
>     I do recall someone (not sure who) mentioning that this issue of the
> proper semantics for articles has been an issue, but I don't recall in what
> context.  I suppose it may well have been a hot topic for the DBpedia
> community at some time.  I apologize that I am quite new to this community,
> so do not know the history.
>
>     But unless there are performance issues that are truly insurmountable, it
> seems to me not to be difficult to get the semantics right so that the
> ontology can grow to accurately reflect properties and relations of the
> entities discussed by Wikipedia.  And I will be willing to help in that
> task.
>
>
>     Or . . .  is this a task that has consciously been left to the
> GoodRelations group?
>
>    Pat
>
> Patrick Cassidy
> MICRA Inc.
> cass...@micra.com
> 908-561-3416

The ontology is deliberately small. The goal is for others to use it as 
basis for better ontologies as demonstrated by SUMO, Yago2, Cyc and 
other TBox mappings.

At the end of the day, no ontology is a gospel ontology. Each provides 
specific context lenses into a given ABox.

Kingsley
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Brunnbauer [mailto:bru...@netestate.de]
> Sent: Sunday, January 01, 2012 10:35 AM
> To: Patrick Cassidy
> Cc: dbpedia-discussion@lists.sourceforge.net
> Subject: Re: [Dbpedia-discussion] DBpedia ontology
>
>
> Hello Pat,
>
> DBpedia is not an ontology - it is a dataset of instance data that partly
> uses
> an ontology created by the DBpedia team.
>
> The Instance data (ABox) has the namespace http://dbpedia.org/resource/ -
> e.g.
>
>   http://dbpedia.org/resource/Albatross
>
> The Ontology (TBox) has the namespace http://dbpedia.org/ontology/ - e.g.
>
>   http://dbpedia.org/ontology/Bird
>
> I agree with you that it would be nice if many DBpedia entries would be
> classes
> with proper subclassing instead of individuals. But as DBpedia data is
> generated automatically from Wikipedia, I guess it would be quite difficult
> to keep this consistent.
>
> You are not the first one to notice these deficiencies in the use of
> DBpedia,
> see "Frequently Asked Questions" on http://www.productontology.org/
>
> Regards,
>
> Michael Brunnbauer
>
>
>
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