I agree, concept is far too overloaded a term to use for general conversations regarding ontologies. Not only is the term overloaded across domains, even within a single domain, such as taxonomy, it is difficult at best to get consensus on the definition of concept.
I tend to prefer the terms class and properties. Whatever terms we decide on, we should probably have very brief definitions of them. That probably goes for any terminology we decide on within the group, not only so we understand one another, but outside readers understand any of the documentation that we produce.
- Rob
Roger Hyam wrote:
Hi All,
Gregor and I are having a discussion over what 'concept' means.
Gregor said: Roger, I suggest, you replace unqualified "concept" with something that qualifies what kind of concept you mean. If I read concept I think of a taxon concept or descriptive concept (flower, color, blue, frequently) but not of the kind of concepts you mean (I would say "data elements" for these, but I leave it to you. This was the source of the major misunderstanding about Management system and data. Note that both taxon and descriptive concepts have and need ontology information, even if not expressed in RDF - so just saying "ontology concepts" would not be very clear I believe.
I know TAPIR and BioCASE use concepts to mean element or attribute and believe DwC do as well. I thought I was on clear ground here in using it in the context of ontologies.
What word other than 'concept' can I use to describe a thing in an ontology i.e. a class, property, attribute whatever.
Any suggestions,
Roger
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Roger Hyam Technical Architect Taxonomic Databases Working Group
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