Quoting "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>: (01)
> Barry, Rick, Gary, et al.,
>
> I browsed through Azmat A's 1717-page tome,
> (but I spared the trees by not printing it out):
>
> http://www.encyclopedic-intelligence.com/
>
> And I agree with the implication of Barry's ironic
> comment that our prayers have not been answered.
> I also sympathize with Gary's point:
>
> GBC> These types of encyclopedic ontology efforts
> > that pop up suggest we need to be concerned about
> > ontology consumer protection. Perhaps, as develop
> > better criteria to judge these candidates we can
> > launch an effort, say at NIST to develop some
> > standards by which we judge these candidates.
> (02)
NCOR has an evaluation committee which is charged precisely with doing
that. See the NCOR wiki at http://ontologist.org. Also the NCBO
(http://ncbo.us) has a parallel effort for biomedical ontologies. (03)
> The system Matthew West has been proposing is one of
> the few that has been tested on some large applications
> but so far, people who have developed other ontologies
> aren't showing any enthusiasm for adopting its upper
> ontology in place of their own.
>
> I would like to recall the issues I raised in my paper
> on the Challenge of Knowledge Soup:
>
> http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/challenge.pdf
>
> After 21 years of effort by Cyc and other groups,
> the claim that a large ontology is necessary or
> sufficient for successful applications is very
> much in doubt.
>
> So we have to ask some serious questions:
>
> 1. Aside from axioms, which could be added to
> Azmat's ontology if anyone wanted to do so,
> what features make any of the current proposals
> better or worse than Azmat's upper level plus
> some suitable axioms? (04)
The documentation of some of the alternatives DOES NOT USE CAPITAL
LETTERS IN THE STYLE OF WEBSITES DEVOTED TO THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION. (05)
>
> 2. Is a one-size-fits-all upper ontology essential
> or even desirable to support interoperability?
>
A small one is desirable (and I think unavoidable), capturing for
instance the distinction between monadic types and relations. (06)
> 3. If there is a need for a single upper ontology,
> by what criteria could we judge which, if any,
> of the current proposals are worthy candidates?
>
This is one of the questions the NCOR evaluation committee will be
addressing. E.g. by comparing different ontologies in use, and
examining results. The idea is to do this scientifically, and by a
neutral body with no axe to grind. Hence I, for example, am not part of
these evaluation efforts.
BS (07)
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