

How should I "link" a predicate?

From: Paul Houle <ontology2@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2010 11:30:28 -0400
Message-ID: <AANLkTin=y0k5pyBpkPB4xdZ30KH0Oa01ueS5WkyjAzs6@mail.gmail.com>
     I'm planning to define a few predicates because I think existing
predicates don't exactly express what I'm trying to say.

     Since a predicate is a URI,  there's the question of "What should be
served up at the the URI if somebody (a) types it into the browser,  or (b)
looks at it with a semweb client?"

     What's the best thing to do here.  It might be lame,  but I'm thinking
about making the predicate URL do a 301 redirect to a CMS page that has a
human-readable description of the predicate.

     I suppose that a predicate URL page could also have some RDF assertions
on it about the predicate,  for instance,  a collection of OWL assertions
about it could be useful...  However,  beyond that,  I don't think the state
of the art in upper ontologies is good enough that we can really make a
machine readable definition of what a predicate means at this time.

    For the predicate that I need most immediately,  there's the issue that
there are optional OWL statements that could be asserted about it that would
provide an interpretation that some people would accept some of the time --
however,  I wouldn't be coining this predicate if I thought this
interpretation was 100% correct.  In this case,  I think the best I can do
is make a human-readable assertion that

"You could put this assertion about my predicate in your OWL engine if you

    and leave it at that.

    Any thoughts?
Received on Thursday, 19 August 2010 15:30:55 UTC
