I agree that it seems harder to crowdsource ontologies. However, Wikipedia seems to have a half-decent organization, so maybe it is possible. My view is that Wikipedia is succeeding, and not just in overall organization, because there are Wikipedia editors that challenge and remove incorrect and incoherent information and also spend time oncleanup tasks. I think that any crowdsourced artifact needs to have participants that spend considerable time on these tasks.
It appears that the DBpedia ontologyhas not been subject to much of this kind of activity. Just today I went through the DBpedia class taxnomy and marked classes that were arguably misplaced. I found over 50 out of about 500 non-sport classes(and the sport classes probably all need some attention). The misplacement of DBpediaclasses is not justa problem with the DBpedia ontology, of course, as the DBpedia taxonomy is used to generate type statements for all DBpedia resources. The only aspect of DBpedia that makes this not quite so severe a problem is that many of the misplaced classes have few or no instances. However, some of the misplaced classes, e.g., FictionalCharacter, ChessPlayer, PokerPlayer, Saint, Religious, Monarch, Medician, Galaxy, Restaurant, Country, Grape, and Venue, have a significant number of instances. peter On 04/15/2014 07:16 PM, Mike Bergman wrote: > Hi Peter, > > My observation is that crowdsourced knowledge bases (namely, Wikipedia, > DBpedia, schema.org, Freebase, etc) can be excellent sources for the > description and characterization of things and entities, but the structures > that may be derived from them will by definition be incoherent at the TBox > level. > > Exhortations to many contributors to be more coherent at a structural level > are not likely, I believe, to meet with much success. The motivations of > contributors and editors are most often local within the KB space. Thus, in > microcosm, many parts of these KBs can look pretty good, but when the scope > extends more broadly across the KB, the coherence breaks down. There aren't > many advocates for structure-wide coherence. > > As an advocate for structure-wide coherence and one who is not afraid to > wade into the fray, perhaps you can work some useful magic. I'm dubious, but > I truly wish you luck. > > Our approach, which we have been working on for some years episodically, > with another episode due shortly, is to use a coherent structure (UMBEL, in > our approach, which is a faithful, simplified subset of Cyc) to provide the > TBox, and then to find defensible ways to map the entity and concept > information in crowdsourced KBs to that structure. > > We have been talking about this for so long that it is time for us to > complete our initial development and put something forward that you and > others can similarly scrutinize. We hope to have something useful by this > summer. > > Thanks, Mike > > On 4/15/2014 6:55 PM, Patel-Schneider, Peter wrote: >> Hmm. >> >> Well, perhaps one could argue that there should be no hierarchy at all. >> >> Using the DBpedia ontology does commit you to a lot of things, many of them >> quite questionable. For example, in the DBpedia ontology churches are >> buildings, which is not true for many churches, and not even true for the >> physical location associated with many churches. This is one of the things >> that I think needs to be changed. >> >> peter >> >> >> On Apr 15, 2014, at 4:57 PM, Paul Houle <ontolo...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> I try not to get hung up on the idea of having one right hierarchy but >>> assume most end users will need to interpret the types that exist in >>> the way that makes sense for what they are doing. >>> >>> The idea of foaf:Agent, which is a superclass of both person and >>> organization, is a powerful concept because of properties shared by >>> these two "things"; for instance, either can be a party to a >>> lawsuit. Even in music you could say a brand like "Michael Jackson" >>> is a team effort. >>> >>> On the other hand some people want :Flutist to be a subclass of >>> :Person and it makes sense to say one person who plays the flute is a >>> :Flutist but you can't say that a trio that all plays the flute is a >>> :Flutist. Everybody has some theorem they expect the system to prove >>> and they won't accept your axiom set unless you can prove their >>> theorem with it. >>> >>> On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 6:51 PM, Patel-Schneider, Peter >>> <peter.patel-schnei...@nuance.com> wrote: >>>> schema.org is controlled by the schema.org partners, Google, Yahoo!, >>>> Bing, and Yandex. Contributions from the community are accepted, but are >>>> vetted before being added to schema.org >>>> >>>> See http://schema.org for more information. >>>> >>>> >>>> One problem with alignment to schema.org is that the formal meaning of >>>> the schema.org ontology is unusual and not fully explained. >>>> >>>> peter >>>> >>>> >>>> >>>> On Apr 14, 2014, at 10:08 PM, 小出 誠二 <seijikoi...@gmail.com> wrote: >>>> >>>>> Dear Peter >>>>> >>>>> For eyes of ontologists, it is well known that DBpedia ontology is >>>>> incorrect, but I have never check about the contents of schema.org. Thank >>>>> you for the info. >>>>> >>>>> I am planning to correct trustable ontologies like schema.org, but I do >>>>> not >>>>> know how to revise or advice the contents of schema.org. >>>>> >>>>> Does anyone know it? Or does anyone have interest the portal sites of >>>>> trustable ontologies? >>>>> >>>>> Seiji Koide >>>>> >>>>> -----Original Message----- >>>>> From: Patel-Schneider, Peter [mailto:peter.patel-schnei...@nuance.com] >>>>> Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2014 1:50 PM >>>>> To: dbpedia-discussion@lists.sourceforge.net >>>>> Subject: [Dbpedia-discussion] probably incorrect mapping to schema.org >>>>> from >>>>> MusicalArtist >>>>> >>>>> The ontology says that MusicalArtist is a subclass of >>>>> schema.org:MusicGroup. >>>>> >>>>> This seemed very odd to me, but then I looked at schema.org and noticed >>>>> that >>>>> schema.org:MusicGroup can also be for *solo* artists. However, >>>>> MusicalArtist is for any musical artist, not just soloists. So this >>>>> mapping >>>>> still looks incorrect. >>>>> >>>>> peter >> >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> Learn Graph Databases - Download FREE O'Reilly Book >> "Graph Databases" is the definitive new guide to graph databases and their >> applications. Written by three acclaimed leaders in the field, >> this first edition is now available. Download your free book today! >> http://p.sf.net/sfu/NeoTech >> _______________________________________________ >> Dbpedia-discussion mailing list >> Dbpedia-discussion@lists.sourceforge.net >> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dbpedia-discussion >> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Learn Graph Databases - Download FREE O'Reilly Book "Graph Databases" is the definitive new guide to graph databases and their applications. Written by three acclaimed leaders in the field, this first edition is now available. 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