Mike Bergman posted a two-part series on how to make the Semantic Web work:
Seeking a Semantic Web Sweet Spot
In Search of ‘Gold Standards’ for the Semantic Web
Both are worth your time to read but the second sets the bar for “Gold Standards” for the Semantic Web as:
The need for gold standards for the semantic Web is particularly acute. First, by definition, the scope of the semantic Web is all things and all concepts and all entities. Second, because it embraces human knowledge, it also embraces all human languages with the nuances and varieties thereof. There is an immense gulf in referenceability from the starting languages of the semantic Web in RDF, RDFS and OWL to this full scope. This gulf is chiefly one of vocabulary (or lack thereof). We know how to construct our grammars, but we have few words with understood relationships between them to put in the slots.
The types of gold standards useful to the semantic Web are similar to those useful to our analogy of human languages. We need guidance on structure (syntax and grammar), plus reference vocabularies that encompass the scope of the semantic Web (that is, everything). Like human languages, the vocabulary references should have analogs to dictionaries, thesauri and encyclopedias. We want our references to deal with the specific demands of the semantic Web in capturing the lexical basis of human languages and the connectedness (or not) of things. We also want bases by which all of this information can be related to different human languages.
To capture these criteria, then, I submit we should consider a basic starting set of gold standards:
- RDF/RDFS/OWL — the data model and basic building blocks for the languages
- Wikipedia — the standard reference vocabulary of things, concepts and entities, plus other structural guidances
- WordNet — lexical language references as an aid to natural language processing, and
- UMBEL — the structural reference for the connectedness of things for basic coherence and inference, plus a vocabulary for mapping amongst reference structures and things.
Each of these potential gold standards is next discussed in turn. The majority of discussion centers on Wikipedia and UMBEL.
There is one criteria that Mike leaves out: Choice of a majority of users.
Use by a majority of users is a sweet spot that brooks no argument.
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