The trouble isn't that the current concepts are wrong or that yours are wrong but that the word "Church" means a lot of things to a lot of different people.
Church Buildings are important landmarks and they get drawn on maps; they're often architecturally interesting and knowing about them helps you get around and talk to people about your environment so you don't always depend on existential qualifiers like "the one runs the big the soup kitchen" or "the one that gets visited frequently by the bomb squad." It can't possibly harm your soul to know and to name these things. It is easy to describe these things because they have properties that are easy to populate such as date of construction, architectural style, etc. A trouble with the word "Church" is that it is culture bound. It's fair to say that a "synagogue" is a "Jewish church" and a "mosque" is a "Muslim church" and it's not unusual to see buildings that have been used by one Abrahamic faith be used for another. It's not unusual for the same worship space to be used by people of twelve or so faiths, Abrahamic or not. In the 'en' cultural zone I'd expect people to accept that a Shinto Temple which isn't too different from a Christian church in structure and function, is a 'Shinto Church'. In other cultural zones, a good word needs to be picked and a similar meaning promulgated. "Religious Building" could be determined by deed (in cultural zones that have a well-defined system of land title), but I know plenty of churches that own the building the pastor (and possibly his entourage) lives in and I wouldn't usually call that a 'Church', and some people wouldn't accept that the building that the church rents out for birthday parties and regularly runs a bingo parlor in is a 'Church'. For each large Shinto Temple there are perhaps 100s of small shrines that have a similar role in the landscape as larger churches (spiritually important for the participant of this place-based religion), yet don't have weekly or even monthly organized ceremonies at them. What you're talking about has something to do with "Religious Organization", but I don't think the Knights of Columbus or the Baptist Student Union are "Church(s)" even though in some sense the KoC is part of the Roman Catholic "Church". Maybe what you mean is "Congregation?" With this you can model that the Irish go to mass at 10am at St. Mary's and that the Italians go at noon. That three protestant denominations hold services at one 'Church' and that the Rabbi and his flock were there the previous day? Or that there exists, somewhere, a coven (with no name) that meets every full moon, preferably outdoors, and does a ritual that isn't particularly scandalous but is nevertheless secret and won't be documented as an instance in Wikipedia? The trouble will that for DBpedia is that what we work with is the output of the Wikipedians and their world view. A satisfying set of "Church Building(s)" can be easily had from the source material, but if you want a greatly improved and practical model of religious practice you'll need to be able to "agree to disagree" with Wikipedia. On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 8:55 PM, Patel-Schneider, Peter <peter.patel-schnei...@nuance.com> 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 > -- Paul Houle Expert on Freebase, DBpedia, Hadoop and RDF (607) 539 6254 paul.houle on Skype ontolo...@gmail.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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
