Talk:Ontology (information science)

Conflating ontology with ontology technology

This article conflates the two notions of "applied ontologies" vs "specific ontology technology". There are dozens of implementations of ontologies, not least of which Wikipedia's topic structure, that emphasize and exercise principles of "applied" ontologies, (as opposed to the philosophy of the application of those models, which is what the main Ontology article covers)

But the unifying theme of an ontology is that is a "model of a domain of knowledge that itself facilities the creation of new knowledge". Which is what separates it from a mere taxonomy or glossary in a given domain of knowledge. The main benifit that this article puts forward for an ontology is its helpfulness on getting lots of experts on the same page

But that is the main benefit of a taxonomy and an ontology should be doing more than that. The most substantial example of an ontology in the history of science is without question the periodic table of the elements.

Creating the table layout and maturing it, allowed chemists to infer that new, currently unknown, chemicals must exist and to make interesting predictions about their properties based on their locations in the table and their inferred atomic weights.

The fact that this article does not mention the periodic table is a little like having an article on this history of basketball and not including Wilt Chamberlain or the article on baseball not mentioning Babe Ruth. The periodic table is far and away the most important information ontology that humans ever created and is a central part of the shift away from alchemy towards chemistry, which itself was central to the movement to create modern science. Yet it is not mentioned even among the dozens of examples listed below.

Another huge victory for an ontology was are the Feynman Quark Diagrams, which was an ontology worthy of winning the Feynman the Nobel Prize. It is critical to point out that the most profound ontologies in the history of science have been pen-and-paper exercises, and remain visual drawings to this day. This is reflexive of the ongoing debate in the information science community between the effectiveness of formal ontological methods (which are not well discussed here, but are discussed in isolation) have failed to "catch on" the way that hashtags, wikipedia page name spaces and other "folksonomy" light-weight digital taxonomies have largely won out on information organization over more formal organization schemes like the dewey decimal system. (which BTW is also missing from this article... madness).

Instead of mentioning the tensions between formal and informal ontologies, this article emphasizes Google Knowledge Graph, which it little more IMHO than an "ontology parasite as a product" that has contributed almost nothing to the science of ontologies, and instead merely found a way to commercialize the ontology inherently found in the structure of wikipedia itself. Facebook chooses to call its forum product "groups" but the article on "groups" does not mention this in the introduction of its article. This endorsement of Googles products represents an inappropriate product endorsement that is only incidentally related to actual subject and should be removed.

I propose that I re-write the introduction to the article with these new emphasis. I also propose that the sections of the article which equate specific technologies (OWL etc) be re-written to emphasize that this is one technology attempt to generalize ontology principles, and not an exclusive one.

I will wait for reactions to this proposals over on Talk before I move forward with them... perhaps indefinitely because "who has time?" In that case, I encourage anyone else to attempt to address these underlying issues in the article.

Ftrotter (talk) 04:39, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

I completely disagree with your proposal. It is true that there are other meanings for the term "ontology". In philosophy especially it means something different. That is why there are multiple articles on the topic. This article is about the specific meaning the term has in computer science, library science, and artificial intelligence. If you want to make changes to it the starting point should be reliable sources in that field that support your position, not essays that state your individual opinions, even if they are well thought out opinions as I think yours are. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 14:57, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Rewrite or remove "Criticism" section

The content of this section either needs to be given some context or removed altogether since it adds little to no substance to the overall page. Even then, I'm not sure a rewrite would be worthwhile, given that neither of the two parts of this section amount to criticisms of ontologies. The first part refers to a debate over the utility of the realists' methodology for ontology engineering, while the second doesn't even pass as an actual criticism. SomeEnlightenedNarcissist (talk) 20:41, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

After almost 2 weeks with no response, I went ahead and removed the section myself. I'll leave this open in case someone decides that they'd like to discuss the edit, but I do intend to close this to commenting within 2 weeks. SomeEnlightenedNarcissist (talk) 16:50, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm just looking at this talk page for the first time in a while and from what I remember, I felt the same about the "Criticism" section. I think I left it the last time I made any edits to this article because I didn't know of any good references for legitimate criticism (not saying there isn't any, I can think of several good critiques of specific technologies as well as the concept in general) hoping that someone would clean it up. But since no one did I think the correct thing to do was to just delete it until someone can write something encyclopedic. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 15:03, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Topic notes

Following are reminders for topics to look into for potential coverage within the article.

• There are different types of ontologies including domain ontologies, generic ontologies, application ontologies and representational ontologies.

A note on terminology

"In computer science and information science, ontologies are used to formally represent knowledge within a domain." Would "knowledge" here not be better phrased as "information"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.193.98.171 (talk) 19:08, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

I see that someone has preceded me here, saying just what I also think and have implemented as an edit to the lead. Information science is primarily about information, not so focused on knowledge as such. Well, I hope I am not treading on toes!Chjoaygame (talk) 19:02, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

I see that these comments are old, but I'd still like to address them since nobody else did. The short answer to your question is 'no', simply because many people within the realms of philosophy, computer science, and information science would probably consider knowledge to be a type of information (i.e., information that we have confirmed to be both justifiable and true). If you're still interested, you may want to check out the DIKW Pyramid. SomeEnlightenedNarcissist (talk) 16:57, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

I agree with SomeEnlightenedNarcissist ontologies typically represent knowledge not information. Information is usually at the level of data bases or html files. Ontologies add a formal layer, usually grounded in Description Logic, which is a subset of First Order Logic. This often includes things like rules, subsumption hierarchies, etc. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 05:41, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Knowledge is what people "know" - in other words, knowledge is in people's brains and nowhere else.
All the other stuff that is not in people's brains is "information".
Thus:
Knowledge is NOT information.
What some people call "knowledge graphs", or "domain ontologies" are better termed "domain information structures". Ken Evans 19:29, 26 April 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by The ken evans (talk • contribs)

@The ken evans: You would need to provide reliable sources for your opinion before it could be added to the article: see WP:RS. Of course, if most people generally agreed with your opinion then they would already be using your preferred terms instead of the terms that you wish to replace as well as other terms that contradict your opinion such as distributed cognition, distributed knowledge, knowledge base, knowledge management, knowledge tagging, personal knowledge base, social information processing, etc. Biogeographist (talk) 20:01, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

@Biographist: What a dumb comment! The verb "to know" is about what individual people have stored in their brains. All of the references that you use are just rhetorical devices that have been used by their originators to create misleading hype for their opinions. Ken Evans 13:22, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Mr. Evans, I suggest you familiarize yourself with some of the basic Wikipedia policies. First, we don't insult each other with name calling, we stick to issues about editing the articles and substantive discussion. Civility is one of the Five pillars that define what Wikipedia is about and how editors collaborate with each other. Second, the fact that you think people in the computer science and AI community such as the W3C, Google, Facebook, Stanford, Bioportal, and countless other leaders in the field use certain terminology incorrectly is irrelevant to Wikipedia. If you think that is the case then publish an article or blog or book or whatever and get those communities to start using other terminology. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia where we document certain topics based on reliable sources and terms like ontology and Knowledge Graph are used as described in this article every day by countless people in these fields including myself. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 14:46, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

mistaken IP edit

I undid an IP edit.

The undone edit replaced the word "fundamentally" with the word 'supposedly'. The edit was second-guessing the sentence that it changed. The sentence is "In computer science and information science, an ontology is a formal naming and definition of the types, properties, and interrelationships of the entities that really or fundamentally exist for a particular domain of discourse." The edit intended that the word "fundamentally" assumed something that was actually 'supposed'. But that reading is mistaken. The word "fundamentally" is explanatory of "really", not alternative to it. The "domain of discourse" has its suppositions, and they are implied in the sentence. Repetition of the notion of implication does not improve the sense of the sentence.Chjoaygame (talk) 01:40, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

undid a valuable edit that needs work before it can be accepted

I have just undone a good faith edit that should have been supplied with a reliable source or should have just appeared on this talk page. The edit is probably valuable, but it has not been given the nurture that it needs to prepare it to appear in the article. The article is not the place for unsourced discussion. I trust that Editor Pacerier will take my undo in good part. I am guessing that he has the knowledge to post something in the article with adequate sourcing. Alternatively he might find in the article a specific statement or two that he can tag with request for sourcing, or otherwise challenge. Please excuse my incomplete edit summary: I hit a wrong key.Chjoaygame (talk) 18:02, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

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several minor edits, see talk page

I've added some citations, reworded a few sentences, pulled the etymology from the ontology(philosophy) page, and removed a few sentences to try to improve the flow. Since other articles have been merged into this one, it looks like it's in need of restructuring the sections. Also, I haven't touched the banner calling for more citations in the ontology editors section, and I haven't added any citations for the lengthy lists on editors, languages, applications, etc. I will try to keep working on this article to add any citations I can. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JDontology (talk • contribs) 20:17, 9 May 2018 (UTC)

Removed section

This section doesn't really belong here; I moved it from the article and tried to clean up parts that were not grammatical. A compressed few sentences might be appropriate at knowledge graph (information science) if someone can make sense of it. – SJ + 00:38, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Using a knowledge graph to build ontologies

In the case of integrating supplemental data sources, a knowledge graph formally represents the meaning involved in information by describing concepts, relationships between things, and categories of things. These embedded semantics with the data offer significant advantages such as reasoning over data and dealing with heterogeneous data sources. The rules can be applied on KG more efficiently using graph query. For example, the graph query does the data inference through the connected relations, instead of repeated full search of the tables in relational database. KG facilitates the integration of new heterogeneous data by just adding new relationships between existing information and new entities. This facilitation is emphasized for the integration with existing popular linked open data source such as Wikidata.

An SQL query is tightly coupled and rigidly constrained by datatype within the specific database. It can join tables and extract data from tables. The result is generally a table. A query can join tables by any columns which match by datatype. A SPARQL query is the standard query language and protocol for Linked Open Data on the Web. It is only loosely coupled with the database so that it facilitates the reusability and can extract data through the relations free from the datatype, and not only extract but also generate additional knowledge graph with more sophisticated operations (logic: transitive/symmetric/inverseOf/functional). The inference based query (query on the existing asserted facts without the generation of new facts by logic) can be fast comparing to the reasoning based query (query on the existing plus the generated/discovered facts based on logic).

The information integration of heterogeneous data sources in traditional database is intricate, which requires the redesign of the database table such as changing the structure and/or addition of new data. In the case of semantic query, a SPARQL query reflects the relationships between entities in a way that is aligned with human's understanding of the domain, so the semantic intention of the query can be seen on the query itself. Unlike SPARQL an SQL query reflects the specific structure of the database and is derived from matching the relevant primary and foreign keys of tables. Thereby, it loses the semantics of the query by missing the relationships between entities.

In the case of machine learning, A knowledge graph can help find latent connections among items, help improve precision, and help identify a user's intention which was hidden only by the ML output. A knowledge graph can help to extend a user's interests reasonably using various relation types, increasing diversity. It can also help to generate different knowledge presentations oriented by interested items, augmenting the dataset with the distance values between entities.

Editing Tools Section

Someone recently added a tool called Gra.fo to the section on editors. The reference given was this: https://gra.fo/ If you look at that site it is little more than a "There will eventually be a company site here" site. There are just a few pages with almost no content. I think this tool is clearly not notable so I removed it. But I think it points to a bigger issue, I think many of the tools in this section (another example would be JOE) are quite probably not notable. If the only documentation about an editor comes from their own company or papers written by the developers then IMO it is not notable and should be removed from the article. --MadScientistX11 (talk) 14:39, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Ontology editors

This table below has been moved here from Ontology (information science) § Editors due to lack of inline citations to independent reliable sources (NOT to the software's website) for each item in the table indicating why it should be included. Such citations should be added for each item, and extraneous items should be removed, before the table is returned to the article. Biogeographist (talk) 22:57, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Name	Written in	License	Features	Publisher/creator
a.k.a. software			Ontology, taxonomy and thesaurus management software	The Synercon Group
Anzo for Excel			Includes an RDFS and OWL ontology editor within Excel; generates ontologies from Excel spreadsheets	Cambridge Semantics
Be Informed Suite		Commercial	tool for building large ontology based applications. Includes visual editors, inference engines, export to standard formats
CENtree	Java	Commercial	Web based client-server ontology management tool for life sciences, supports OWL, RDFS, OBO	SciBite
Chimaera			Other web service	Stanford University
CmapTools	Java based		Ontology Editor (COE) ontology editor Supports numerous formats	Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition
Doc-Tags		commercial	Automated, subject matter agnostic, Ontology creator and editor supporting six languages (English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Spanish)	DBI Technologies Inc.
dot15926 Editor	Python?	Open source	ontology editor for data compliant to engineering ontology standard ISO 15926. Allows Python scripting and pattern-based data analysis. Supports extensions.
EMFText OWL2 Manchester Editor	Eclipse-based	open-source	Pellet integration
Enterprise Architect			along with UML modeling, supports OMG's Ontology Definition MetaModel which includes OWL and RDF	Sparx Systems
Fluent Editor			ontology editor for OWL and SWRL with Controlled Natural Language (Controlled English). Supports OWL, RDF, DL and Functional rendering, unlimited imports and built-in reasoning services.
Gra.fo		Free and Commercial	A visual, collaborative and real time ontology and knowledge graph schema editor. Features include sharing documents, commenting, search and tracking history. Support W3C Semantic Web standards: RDF, RDFS, OWL and also Property Graph schemas.	Capsenta
HOZO	Java		graphical editor especially created to produce heavy-weight and well thought out ontologies	Osaka University and Enegate Co, ltd.
Java Ontology Editor (JOE)	Java		Can be used to create and browse ontologies, and construct ontology based queries. Incorporates abstraction mechanisms that enable users to manage large ontologies	Center for Information Technology, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of South Carolina
KAON		open source	single user and server based solutions possible	FZI/AIFB Karlsruhe
KMgen			Ontology editor for the KM language. km: The Knowledge Machine
Knoodl		Free	web application/service that is an ontology editor, wiki, and ontology registry. Supports creation of communities where members can collaboratively import, create, discuss, document and publish ontologies. Supports OWL, RDF, RDFS, and SPARQL queries.	Revelytix, Inc..
Menthor Editor			An ontology engineering tool for dealing with OntoUML. It also includes OntoUML syntax validation, Alloy simulation, Anti-Pattern verification, and transformations from OntoUML to OWL, SBVR and Natural Language (Brazilian Portuguese)
Model Futures IDEAS AddIn		free	A plug-in for Enterprise Architect] that allows IDEAS Group 4D ontologies to be developed using a UML profile
Model Futures OWL Editor		Free	Able to work with very large OWL files (e.g. Cyc) and has extensive import and export capabilities (inc. UML, Thesaurus Descriptor, MS Word, CA ERwin Data Modeler, CSV, etc.)
myWeb	Java		mySQL connection, bundled with applet that allows online browsing of ontologies (including OBO)
Neologism	built on Drupal	open source	Web-based, supports RDFS and a subset of OWL
NeOn Toolkit	Eclipse-based	open source	OWL support, several import mechanisms, support for reuse and management of networked ontologies, visualization, etc.	NeOn Project
OBIS			Web based user interface that allows users to input ontology instances that can be accessed via SPARQL endpoint
OBO-Edit	Java	open source	downloadable, developed by the Gene Ontology Consortium for editing biological ontologies. OBO-Edit is no longer actively developed	Gene Ontology Consortium
Ontosight		Free and Commercial	Machine learning-based auto-scaling biomedical ontology combining all public biomedical ontologies	Innoplexus
OntoStudio	Eclipse	downloadable, support for RDF(S), OWL and ObjectLogic (derived from F-Logic), graphical rule editor, visualizations	semafora systems
Ontolingua			Web service	Stanford University
ONTOLIS		Commercial	Collaborative web application for managing ontologies and knowledge engineering, web-browser-based graphical rules editor, sophisticated search and export interface. Web service available to link ontology information to existing data	ONTOLIS
Open Semantic Framework (OSF)			an integrated software stack using semantic technologies for knowledge management, which includes an ontology editor
OWLGrEd			A graphical ontology editor, easy-to-use
PoolParty Thesaurus Server		Commercial	ontology, taxonomy and thesaurus management software, fully based on standards like RDFS, SKOS and SPARQL, integrated with Virtuoso Universal Server	Semantic Web Company
Protégé	Java	open source	downloadable, supports OWL, many sample ontologies	Stanford University
ScholOnto			net-centric representations of research
Semantic Turkey	Firefox extension - based on Java		for managing ontologies and acquiring new knowledge from the Web	developed at University of Rome, Tor Vergata
Sigma knowledge engineering environment			is a system primarily for development of the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology
Swoop	Java	open source	downloadable, OWL Ontology browser and editor	University of Maryland
Semaphore Ontology Manager		Commercial	ontology, taxonomy and thesaurus management software. Tool to manage the entire "build - enhance - review - maintain" ontology lifecycle.	Smartlogic Semaphore Limited
Synaptica			Ontology, taxonomy and thesaurus management software. Web based, supports OWL and SKOS.	Synaptica, LLC.
TopBraid Composer	Eclipse-based		downloadable, full support for RDFS and OWL, built-in inference engine, SWRL editor and SPARQL queries, visualization, import of XML and UML	TopQuadrant
Transinsight			Editor especially designed for creating text mining ontologies and part of GoPubMed.org
WebODE			Web service	Technical University of Madrid
TwoUse Toolkit	Eclipse-based	open source	model-driven ontology editing environment especially designed for software engineers
Thesaurus Master			Manages creation and use of ontologies for use in data management and semantic enrichment by enterprise, government, and scholarly publishers.
TODE	.Net		Tool for Ontology Development and Editing
VocBench			Collaborative Web Platform for Management of SKOS thesauri, OWL ontologies and OntoLex lexicons, now in its third incarnation supported by the ISA2 program of the EU	originally developed on a joint effort between University of Rome Tor Vergata and the Food and the Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: FAO
xAIgent		commercial	RESTful API for automated, subject domain agnostic, creation and management of ontologies for use in data management, knowledge management, semantic web, indexing, data labeling, document tagging	DBI Technologies Inc.

References

Ontology (Information Science) vs. Ontology (Computer Science)

Some time ago, I renamed "Ontology (Information Science)" to "Ontology (Computer Science)". I did that based on research in Wikidata and Google searches.

I now have the following message on my talk page: "please revert the redirect from Ontology (Information Science) to Ontology (Information Science) and not Ontology (Computer science). The move is not sufficiently motivated by the "evidence" in wikidata. may I ask what has motivated your actions here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Neumarcx (talk • contribs) 08:43, 6 June 2023 (UTC)"

Relevant diff by me: Special:Diff/1129153531: "The (computer science is the primary field, information secondary (references are in Wikidata).

Wikidata:

• Wikidata:Q324254
• There, under "studied by", both "computer science" and "information science" are listed, with references.
• There are more refs to "computer science" than for "information science", which is why I picked "computer science" as the primary one for the article title.
• In the body text, we could use "computer science and information science".

What is best and why? Any more refs than those I gave in Wikidata "studied by" section? --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:17, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

thank you Dan, I would prefer if you could treat them separately. Information Science is not limited to Computers and hence has a different approach to ontologies. I would recommend to reinstall Ontology (Information Science) link and page. And create Ontology (Computer Science) as a new topic.

For now your change has created a plethora of misleading references. eg on the Ontology page we now have a reference to Ontology (Information Science). It's a bit of a mess. Please take note that Information Science and Computer Science are not the same disciplines. You can find further documentation on the respective wikipedia pages. Also they are not simply temporal transformations, like one followed and replaced the other.

So I would recommend to revert the change. You may want to add the Ontology (Computer Science) as a section in the Ontology (Information Science) page. Neumarcx (talk) 10:13, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

From perusal of the references I gave in Wikidata, I do not see two different fields "Ontology (Information science)" and "Ontology (Computer science)"; I see a single field. I mean this Wikidata item: Wikidata:Q324254.

For instance, http://web.dfc.unibo.it/buzzetti/IUcorso2007-08/mdidattici/ontology-definition-2007.htm says "In the context of computer and information sciences, an ontology defines a set of representational primitives with which to model a domain of knowledge or discourse." And https://www.datastory.org/services/glossary/knowledge-organization/ontology-information-science says "In computer science and information science, an ontology is a way of keeping track of how things are interrelated by defining ways of categorizing and linking subjects. Ontology development encompasses representation, formal naming and definition of the categories, properties and relations between the concepts, data and entities."

Which sources make you think there are two different fields, "Ontology (computer science)" and "Ontology (information science)"? What would the difference consist in? --Dan Polansky (talk) 21:10, 10 June 2023 (UTC)

You argue against your own case. If they are the same (and they are certainly not) why did you change it in the first place. Information science is an academic field that concerns itself primarily with aspects of information. It may make use of some tools that are related to computer science and engineering. The page clearly was about Information Science and its relationship to Ontology. Now you have just renamed Ontology (Information Science) to Ontology (Computer Science) for no good reason. The page is still about Ontology (Information Science).

Again please revert this change and create a new page for Ontology (Computer Science) if this is your primary objective. You can provide links from the Ontology page to both pages Ontology (Information Science) and Ontology (Computer Science). Neumarcx (talk) 06:51, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

What sources can I read to arrive to your conclusions? My sources are plentifully linked from Wikidata:Q324254.

I do not say that information science and computer science are the same field (I have a master's in computer science); I am saying that, as far as my sources indicate, these two fields have an overlapping subject of "ontology"; there is a separate subject "ontology (philosophy)".

As to why I renamed the article: it is because more sources indicated "computer science" to be the primary field for ontology, and these sources are in Wikidata:Q324254.

Again, just to be on the same page, what are some of the best sources you recommend for me to read to arrive at your view? --Dan Polansky (talk)

As for the sources linked from Wikipedia article (I did not so far add or remove any sources to it), I clicked on https://iaoa.org/isc2012/docs/Guarino2009_What_is_an_Ontology.pdf and it speaks of ontology in "computer science". Someone might want to systematically go through the WP-linked sources and see whether they tend to link ontology to computer science or information science. The first step might be to find at least one source that links ontology to "information science" without mentioning "computer science". --Dan Polansky (talk) 10:23, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

You should read your own references. The paper distinguishes between Ontology and "an ontology".

But this is already another discussion. Here you have just renamed an already existing topic namely Ontology (Information Science) with a new topic Ontology (Computer Science). There certainly are overlaps and you could add Ontology (Logic), Ontology (Semantics) or Ontology (Natural Sciences). These could all be valid new pages but you can't just rename an existing topic and claim one wins over the other and reuse the entire content and relabel it. You could also ask how does it differ to other concepts in Information Science such as taxonomies, schemas and thesauri. All very much established ways to structure and organize knowledge. Topics that have been well adopted in Computer Science but in no way have been a contribution by Computer Science itself.

If you want to learn about Information Science please consult its wikipedia page or the ASIS&T reference page https://www.asist.org/about/what-is-information-science/

Again this is not about the merits of a new page called Ontology (Computer Science) but about renaming an existing wikipedia page that was in use for over 20 years and renaming it from Ontology (Information Science) to new name in October 2022. There is ongoing activity in Information Science on the topic with a different focus to other disciplines. Neumarcx (talk) 12:14, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

The above statements do not trace to any sources, and sound implausible on the face of it. In particular, I do not believe there are so many different subjects of "ontology" to be covered by Wikipedia.

I still do not have a single reference on "ontology in information science" that does not at the same time mention "computer science".

Let's play the sourcing game, shall we. I have no reason to believe statements that sound implausible to me and trace to no sources. --Dan Polansky (talk) 14:47, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

this is not a game Dan. you are deliberately falsifying statements. the page is about Ontology (Information Science) as is clearly obvious. (Neumarcx) (talk) 16:51, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

here are a few reference for you Dan:

The double role of ontologies in information science research.

Frederico Fonseca

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology

First published: 26 February 2007

https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/asi.20565

Ontologies.

B. C. Vickery

Journal of Information Science

Volume 23 Issue 4, August 1997

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/016555159702300402?journalCode=jisb

Ontology in Information Science.

book edited by Ciza Thomas

March 8th, 2018

https://www.intechopen.com/books/5844

Concepts and semantic relations in information science.

Wolfgang G. Stock

First published: 15 September 2010

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/asi.21382

Neumarcx (talk) 17:27, 11 June 2023 (UTC)

(Outdent) Thank you. We have now established that some sources link ontology to "information science". This is perhaps not surprising given that ontologies can be viewed to some extent as an extension or refinement of thesauri in information retrieval, and these seem to be studied by information science. We also have that many sources link ontology to "computer science"; this is not surprising given a key defining feature of ontology are formal axioms that can be processed by machines. The article says, without that being result of my intervention, that "In computer science and information science, an ontology [...]". I rest my case that there is only one subject, whether it is called "Ontology (information science)" or "Ontology (computer science)". I used the technique of Wikidata to arrive at the conclusion that "computer science" is better to be taken as the primary field. Above, I gave a source from the article that indicates "computer science" as the field. And what makes ontology different to thesauri from information science is very computer science-like: it is representations of axioms via symbolic logic to be processed by machines/computers, which bear almost no relation to the investigations of thesauri.

If we can agree that we are dealing with only one subject and that we want to find the primary field while accepting that there is also a secondary field, the question is whether we can agree on investigation methods of finding the answer. I propose that Google searches are one of the methods, as well as investigation of authoritative sources linked from Wikidata, and perhaps original arguments about what is more information science-like and what is more computer science-like.

As for Google search results, I added some of the results to Wikidata some time ago, and they are still linked from there.

As for Wikidata-linked sources as identifiers, I will note WordNet: http://wordnet-rdf.princeton.edu/id/06172695-n, "ontology (computer science) a rigorous and exhaustive organization of some knowledge domain that is usually hierarchical and contains all the relevant entities and their relations". I will note Italian https://thes.bncf.firenze.sbn.it/termine.php?id=45879, Ontologia <Informatica>, Ontologie formali, where Italian Informatica is computer science, not information science, despite appearances. LCSH https://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2005006014.html says that Ontologies (Information retrieval) are under the broader term of Data structures (Computer science). --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:36, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

Thank You Dan, before we continue I like to emphasize that we will have to set the page back to Ontology (Information Science) more in line with the Semantic Web vision.

I believe what you refer to is something more like an Expert System type AI ontology. These two topics have quite different and have let to a number of new efforts like Linked Data and Open Linked Data. Another example would be wikidata.

I have to insist and ask you to create a new page called Ontology (Computer Science) if this is your primary interest. Again the two are quite different philosophies that have let to significant disputes about the validity of approach. Even in Computer Science there are different schools of thought.

If I understand you correctly I can go ahead and revert your move to rename the page Ontology (Information Science) to Ontology (Computer Science).

Please go ahead and create a new page dedicated to Ontology (Computer Science). Neumarcx (talk) 13:40, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

just had a chance to make the change. It might be best to create a section about formal ontologies in the page, and mention the aspect you have mentioned as axiomatisation. This probably best describes the use of Ontology you had in mind. In the long term a new page might be best that is dedicated to the topic of Ontology (Computer Science) if you can substantiate the creation of a new page. Neumarcx (talk) 15:02, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

I find the above unconvincing, poorly sourced, ignoring all my sources, research and arguments, and especially making the unsubstantiated and implausible claim that there are in fact two subjects or even more. I am not sure what the status quo ante on the page is; it depends on whether my move happened long enough time ago, and I am unsure about Wikipedia conventions in this regard. I will ponder next most productive steps, to perhaps take later; I may have to give up and pursue more productive aims, but let us see. From my best understanding, the page belongs to "Ontology (computer science)" much more than "Ontology (information science)".

Here, for reference, collection of my sources, in addition to WordNet, etc. already posted:

• Toward Principles for the Design of Ontologies Used for Knowledge Sharing by Thomas R. Gruber, Stanford Knowledge Systems Laborator, 1993, tomgruber.org
• Ontology Development 101: A Guide to Creating Your First Ontology by Natalya F. Noy and Deborah L. McGuinness, Stanford University, perso.liris.cnrs.fr
• ONTOLOGIES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE by Diana Man -- refers to Tom Gruber
• What is an ontology? by Christopher A. Welty, uvm.edu -- in computer science, "a specification of a conceptualization."
• An Introduction to Ontologies and Ontology Engineering, Catherine Roussey, Francois Pinet, Myoung Ah Kang, and Oscar Corcho, oa.upm.es
• 3.1 Ontology in Philosophy and Computer Science, open.hpi.de
• Ontology (computer science), academickids.com
• What is Ontology?, ontologyworks.com

--Dan Polansky (talk) 16:43, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

I think you have missed a lot about the discussion in the Semantic Web community. with regards to the Semantic Web you could argue that Ontologies have failed and data graphs have prevailed.

But again this discussion is not directly relevant to the page Ontology (Information Science). There exists an activity in Information Science that develops and researches and expands on ontologies. That's what the page is about. For a long time Computer Science has ignored ontologies and still does. That said there is absolutely a case for formal ontologies. A discussion that is most likely related to the field of Logic. For example you can develop an ontology with full first order logic axiomatisation. Things that have been down for a very long time in the expert system community. Now I believe this is use of the word ontology that is your primary concern.

I will continue to monitor this page and will try to further delineate the difference. Also Information Science borrows significantly from other Scientific fields such as sociology and philosophy.

Also please feel free to contact me to further discuss this in greater detail. Neumarcx (talk) 18:51, 13 June 2023 (UTC)