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Definition of Ontology

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It is not true that reference (Gruber, 1993) gives the definition of ontology as "formal, explicit specification of a shared conceptualisation". The actual quote is "explicit specification of a conceptualisation". While one may argue about which is a better definition, it is a fact that the definition in (Gruber, 1993) is the latter. I see lots of papers where the former definition is attributed to the source - apparently they are either copying from Wikipedia without reading the original paper, or copying from the same misquoting that is reproduced here.Taraathan (talk) 19:34, 30 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]


Weaknesses of Ontology

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Anyone get the feeling here that ontologies are mostly nonsense? An ontology is just an "index" that organizes whatever you are classifying. Without an index, the data are mostly useless, but the index itself is not the data.

And each person would create a different indexing scheme, whatever they might want to call it and however obtuse they make it.

My experience as a webmaster and searching the internet is that you just have to do broad searches and sift through the raw data yourself. There is no magic ontology, index, or omnipotent short-cut. Just grind it out.

Any web page that tries to insert a "catagorization" scheme in front of their data, has just eliminated their data from searches. It might as well not exist.

Before you completely dismiss this comment, there is an analogy to World War II. The allies spent an enormous effort on "pin-point" bombing of the german war factories. The strategy that ultimately prevailed was "carpet bombing", just bomb it all so you don't miss anything.

All this "pin-point" indexing is not nearly as effective as just putting all the data out there and let the search machines have at it.

Thank you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.67.6.15 (talk) 14:54, 30 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WP Talk pages are not Usenet; they're specifically intended for discussing the page, not the topic. Please move this discussion to your blog or whatever. --Macrakis 15:46, 12 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Reversal of the Meaning of Ontology

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On this page, it should be noted somewhere that this use of the word ontology is incorrect and confusing. Ontology is a branch of philosophy focused on the nature of being, not an information modeling system. The meaning of the word 'Ontologies' in computer science is almost completely opposite to that of the meaning in philosophy. Ontologies in philosophy focus on the whole of something. Ontologies in computer science focus on the parts of something. This reversal of meaning makes it very difficult for someone knowledgeable in the area of philosophical ontology to use the computer science word ontology as it means the opposite. The philosophical ontology of a bridge is 'is a bridge' whereas the computer science ontology of a bridge lists its attributes, relationships, uses etc. Philosophically if I write, I may be an author or I may be a journalist or both or neither. Whether I am an author has more to do with who I am rather than whether I write. In computer science, everyone who writes would be author whether they were or not. The confusion caused by the computer science reversal of the the meaning needs to be mentioned on the page. It's not just that computer scientists are misusing the word, they are reversing its meaning. 108.210.238.69 (talk) 21:04, 7 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is not a criticism, this is a request of disambiguation. Indeed, the page "Ontology" should be "Ontology (Philosophy)" and there should be a page "Ontology (disambiguation)". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.10.248.213 (talk) 00:47, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Terminology

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An ontology is not a 'data model', as specified in the first line of the entry. Data models necessitate formal mechanism's for providing structure, integrity and manipulation. An ontology as a conceptual entity only enforces structure, and as such its description as a data model is misleading - it is a data structure/schema.

I agree. It is not a data model but a model for knowledge representation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.114.205.92 (talk) 12:06, 12 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just a question on terminology: why not use 'generic ontology' instead of foundation ontology or upper ontology? MajFreak

I've seen Top Level Ontology too?

--130.76.32.167 (talk) 02:43, 12 February 2008 (UTC) I also agree. Some ontologies may be used as data models, but some are not. So this is misleading and inaccurate. It would be correct to say an ontology is a model. So this can be fixed by merely removing the word data in the definition. [Dr. Michael Uschold][reply]

I think it is too much time that this discussion has occurred. At the moment, the page says that "Ontologies are the structural frameworks for organizing information". The only word I would save here is "information", the rest is definitely misleading.

Grammar to fix

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In the Relationships section, this sentence needs a grammar fix: "For example in the ontology that contains the concept Ford Explorer and the concept Ford Bronco might be related by a relation of type <is defined as a successor of>." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.101.4.189 (talk) 17:16, 30 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Some more general introduction

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Hi, I just wikified the whole article. Now I think this article still is in need of some more general introduction, and a history section explaining this subject, it general charateristics and it's origins. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 15:08, 2 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

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I removed the following external links from the article. I think this section shouldn't link to any current organization or other specific ontology. This will only create a linkfarm there. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 21:42, 12 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Organizations
More specific ontologies
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I removed the following three links to ontology engineering, which were just added.

These links do explain "Ontology in general" but focuss on one specific aspect. I think these links should be added in a separate ontology engineering article.

-- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 22:28, 25 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Large section moved to a new Ontology components article

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I removed a large section of this article, see here because I think is far to detailled to fit in an overview article like this. With this text I created a new article, called Ontology components.

-- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 02:09, 26 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Is BioPax an Ontology?

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I notice that biopax is listed as an ontology, is it strictly an ontology? --Hsauro (talk) 20:33, 22 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

image?

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Since this is an article in the English edition of WP, could we get a version of the image that is in English? Also, it would help if the image were in SVG. The PNG version doesn't isn't rendered well at larger sizes.SlowJog (talk) 18:24, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Copy-paste registration

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-- Mdd (talk) 12:58, 5 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Missing Ontologies

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Mesh - http://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/ - http://www.nlm.nih.gov/cgi/mesh/2010/MB_cgi - the mesh is a very large and important ontology, we should not miss to note it, dont you think ?

Copy/paste from owlseek.com

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The last paragraph of the “history” section, created in this edit, may have been copied from http://www.owlseek.com/whatis.html. The Web Archive proves that the text at owlseek.com has existed before the edit that introduced it into this article. –Langec (talk) 16:18, 25 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed that section, it wasn't really adding much to the article anyway.203.97.170.50 (talk)

Relationship to Taxonomy and Classification

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I would like to understand the relationship between an ontology, a taxonomy, and a classification. Are these terms close synonyms? What are the essential characteristics that distinguish the three? Can a Venn diagram help to clarify this? Thanks! --Lbeaumont (talk) 21:48, 25 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Perspective and purpose

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"Different ontologies in the same domain can also arise due to different perceptions of the domain based on cultural background, education, ideology, or because a different representation language was chosen."

Suggest that ontologies are driven by the purpose of the creator(s) and his/her/their theory of causal relationships, which determine the relevance of the objects, etc. within a domain that are selected for inclusion in an ontology. The factors listed in the sentence quoted above sound a bit trivial. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.169.61.242 (talk) 03:29, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Tried to incorporate this into the article. Libcub (talk) 00:34, 16 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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