[tdwg-tag] Lobbing grenades: a challenge [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

[Peter DeVries]

Like Rod I will not be attending TDWG this year in part because there has
not been much feedback regarding my examples over the last year and what
suggestions I make seem only to be considered when they have been submitted
under a different name,

Long ago I had suggested that we split out the semantic web representation
from the standard Darwin Core, but this seems to have only been accepted and
discussed when it was proposed by someone else.

I have been somewhat disillusioned by, and my progress significantly
delayed, through my involvement with TDWG.

Respectfully,

- Pete

On Thu, Sep 22, 2011 at 9:13 AM, greg whitbread <ghw at anbg.gov.au> wrote:

> Rod,
>
> I have to admit that here in Canberra we have spent quite a bit of
> time on this "RDF" thing.  There is little visible yet ( other than
> names, taxa and publications) but from the process we have learnt a
> lot.
>
> The first thing is that simply converting biodiversity data to RDF
> does not add anything of value - though it may work to simplify data
> delivery or presentation.
>
> Secondly, we have learned that the ways we have been modelling
> biodiversity data and developing "standards" in the for our domain are
> most inappropriate for the kinds of semantic interoperability that I
> think we should be striving to achieve.     It is very obvious that we
> need to get serious about stepping back and agreeing to keep our
> ontologies small.  Just large enough to satisfy use cases within a
> domain - adhering to that golden section that guarantees our
> vocabularies and their classes exhibit the very best semantic
> behaviour.  RDFS and OWL may represent our best opportunity to revisit
> the "model" without breaking those parts of our legacy systems that
> have proved so useful for aggregation and interchange - and protecting
> sensitive toes.
>
> Thirdly, our existing vocabularies do not offer the richness required
> by client systems wanting to deliver the value added product that
> might lead to real  community benefits.  It is not possible to use
> these vocabularies to  publish scientifically accurate renderings of
> our biodiversity information holdings.  Our institutional offerings
> are bespoke yet our clients need to do what we do.  We lose so much in
> translation to canonical representations that complicate the process
> of reusing scientific content in scientifically defensible ways.
>
> Last, but not least ( in this abbreviated list), it is quite hard to
> do.  The mercurial nature of linked data in the wild means that we
> have to get our API right before we really let it go.  It is much
> easier to add something that proves necessary than it is to take an
> unnecessary thing away.  We could use a moratorium on the "cool data"
> contract to allow for a period for experimentation while we get the
> schema right and develop the confidence to really do linked data - not
> just RDF.
>
> greg
>
> On 20 September 2011 18:40, Roderic Page <r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk> wrote:
> > It's morning and the coffee hasn't quite kicked in yet, but reading
> through
> > recent TDWG TAG posts, and mindful of the upcoming meeting in New Orleans
> >  (which sadly I won't be attending) I'm seeing a mismatch between the
> amount
> > of effort being expended on discussions of vocabularies, ontologies, etc.
> > and the concrete results we can point to.
> > Hence, a challenge:
> > "What new things have we learnt about biodiversity by converting
> > biodiversity data into RDF?"
> > I'm not saying we can't learn new things, I'm simply asking what have we
> > learnt so far?
> > Since around 2006 we have had literally millions of triples in the wild
> > (uBio, ION, Index Fungorum, IPNI, Catalogue of Life, more recently
> > Biodiversity Collections Index, Atlas of Living Australia, World Register
> of
> > Marine Species, etc.), most of these using the same vocabulary. What new
> > inferences have we made?
> > Let's make the challenge more concrete. Load all these data sources into
> a
> > triple store (subchallenge - is this actually possible?). Perhaps add
> other
> > RDF sources (DBpedia, Bio2RDF, CrossRef). What novel inferences can we
> make?
> >
> > I may, of course, simply be in "grumpy old arse" mode, but we have
> millions
> > of triples in the wild and nothing to show for it. I hope I'm not alone
> in
> > wondering why...
> >
> > Regards
> > Rod
> > ---------------------------------------------------------
> > Roderic Page
> > Professor of Taxonomy
> > Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine
> > College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
> > Graham Kerr Building
> > University of Glasgow
> > Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
> >
> > Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
> > Tel: +44 141 330 4778
> > Fax: +44 141 330 2792
> > AIM: rodpage1962 at aim.com
> > Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192
> > Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
> > Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
> > Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
> >
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> >
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> >
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Greg Whitbread
> Australian National Botanic Gardens
> Australian National Herbarium
> +61 2 62509482
> ghw at anbg.gov.au
>
> "And therfore, at the kynges court, my brother,
> Ech man for hymself, ther is noon oother."
> The Knight's Tale, l. 1181-1182
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-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pete DeVries
Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin - Madison
445 Russell Laboratories
1630 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706
Email: pdevries at wisc.edu
TaxonConcept <http://www.taxonconcept.org/>  &
GeoSpecies<http://about.geospecies.org/> Knowledge
Bases
A Semantic Web, Linked Open Data <http://linkeddata.org/>  Project
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