Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

December 5, 2010

idk (I Don’t Know)

Filed under: Subject Identity,TMDM,Topic Maps,Uncategorized,XTM — Patrick Durusau @ 1:10 pm

What are you using to act as the placeholder for an unknown player of a role?

That is in say a news, crime or accident investigation, there is an association with specified roles, but only some facts and not the identity of all the players is known.

For example, in the recent cablegate case, when the story of the leaks broke, there was clearly an association between the leaked documents and the leaker.

The leaker had a number of known characteristics, the least of which was ready access to a wide range of documents. I am sure there were others.

To investigate that leak with a topic map, I would want to have a representative for the player of that role, to which I can assign properties.

I started to publish a subject identifier for the subject idk (I Don’t Know) to act as that placeholder but then thought it needs more discussion.

This has been in my blog queue for a couple of weeks so another week or so before creating a subject identifier won’t hurt.

The problem, which you already spotted, is that TMDM governed topic maps are going to merge topics with the idk (I Don’t Know) subject identifier. Which would in incorrect in many cases.

Interesting that it would not be wrong in all cases. That is I could have two associations, both of which have idk (I Don’t Know) subject identifiers and I want them to merge on the basis of other properties. So in that case the subject identifiers should merge.

I am leaning towards simply defining the semantics to be non-merger in the absence of merger on some other specified basis.

Suggestions?

PS: I kept writing the expansion idk (I Don’t Know) because a popular search engine suggested Insane Dutch Killers as the expansion. Wanted to avoid any ambiguity.

1 Comment

  1. […] Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity « idk (I Don’t Know) […]

    Pingback by idk (I Don’t Know) – Ontology, Semantic Web – Cablegate « Another Word For It — December 5, 2010 @ 4:45 pm

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