Minutes for 01 August 2007 URW3 Meeting

Attendees:

Agenda:

  1. Approve minutes from 11 July 2007 meeting.  Note, the minutes are linked from http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/urw3/#Minutes.
  2. Review status of action items from previous meeting.
  3. Discuss draft final report Wiki page http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/urw3/Wiki/DraftFinalReport.
  4. Identify editing team for final report.
  5. Summarize email discussions since last meeting.  Identify areas of agreement and disagreement, and topics where further discussion is warranted. Due to time limitations, we cannot get into too much depth in telecons -- we must simply identify where we have closure and where further discussion is needed.
  6. Establish/review discussion schedule for next several meetings.
  7. Other business

Scribe: Paulo Costa

Discussion summary:

General note: Due to technical problems, Peter Vojtas participation was made via IRC only (no phone connection).

  1. Minutes from previous meeting were *not* approved due to insufficient quorum (11 max, 12 needed to approve).

  2. Review status of action items from previous meeting

    Action 1: Ken will set up a Wiki page for discussing the final report.
    Status: Done! Available at http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/urw3/Wiki/DraftFinalReport.

    Action 2: Ken will send around an email to determine the dates that work best for July/August telecons.
    Status: Done! Dates: August 01, August 22, September 5, and September 19.

    Action 3: All will continue to attempt to resolve discussion of ‘sentence’ via email and Wiki discussions.
    Status: Work on progress. The discussion kept going through this meeting and will continue via Wiki.

    Action 4: Find someone to discuss a use case at future meeting.
    Status: Action not taken. Besides, due to lack of quorum, use cases were not discussed on this meeting.

  3. Discuss draft final report Wiki page http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/urw3/Wiki/DraftFinalReport.

    1. Everybody agreed on the initial structure of the draft final report Wiki.
    2. Kathy suggested to take each of the topics from the outline and make it a section of the Wiki page. Anne concurred.
    3. Anne suggested Uncertainty Ontology to be broadened to discuss kinds of uncertainty and perhaps known techiques for dealing with them. This will highlight the areas where more focus is needed and also will dovetail in with next section. She will write something on Wiki about this (already done during the meeting, reported that getting the numbering/indenting right was tedious).
    4. Paulo and Kathy requested that the final report should not look as a Wiki page. (ACTION 1) Ken to check how to embed figures into Wiki page. Paulo suggested trying different Wiki editors to find one that better matches our needs. Anne agreed. Ken said we the one we are using was available by the W3C, but we are ok to look for something else.
    5. Peter said (wrote) that after URSW presentations and discussion much more on ontology would be clear. Mitch asked if there is some way we could get a URSW summary for those who cannot attend. Ken suggests those who are in Korea should take responsibility for capturing discussions and bringing them back. Paulo warned that people who will attend URSW should list themselves at a Wiki page so to avoid email overload (ACTION 2) Kathy to make a Wiki list of those attending ISWC workshop. (ACTION 3) Kathy will send an email asking people who will attend URSW to put their names on a Wiki. Kathy asked whether anyone knew the ISWC early bird registration deadline. No one did. Mitch and Paulo reported that the ISWC registration page was empty.

  4. Identify editing team for final report.

    1. We need to Identify several people who will be within the editing team. Other people can participate, but the collection and responsibility on the report will be with the editing team.
    2. Mitch sais he would be glad to be a member of the editing team, but not in the lead role. Kathy and Ken asked not to be in the editing team because of their role as Chair and Co-Chair. Paulo and Trevor volunteered.
    3. We need to define a 3-5 editing team, then decide who will lead. The editors will be responsible for building the content, but everyone can actually write the sections.
    4. (ACTION 4) Paulo, Trevor and Mitch will communicate among themselves to do the organization of the editing team. For the next meeting, they need to report the editing team strategy.
    5. (ACTION 5): Ken will send an email asking who else volunteers to the editing team while also announcing the current volunteers (done during the meeting).

  5. Summarize email discussions since last meeting.  Identify areas of agreement and disagreement, and topics where further discussion is warranted. Due to time limitations, we cannot get into too much depth in telecons -- we must simply identify where we have closure and where further discussion is needed.

    1. Discussion on the uncertainty ontology: definition of sentence still needs some extra clarification and further work.
    2. Mike wrote some comments at http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/urw3/Wiki/Discussion.
    3. Peter was not following the discussion on the definition of sentence, as he didn't have a phone connection. We were discussing what gets probability or uncertainty values attached to them. Mike says ontologically we attach uncertainty to propositions.
    4. Kathy said that we agree that probability can be assigned to sentences, but not on whether this is enough. But in practice, we will attach uncertainty values to expressions in a language.
    5. Anne said that probability attaches to states of the world. Sentences and propositions only represent these.
    6. Giorgios proposed the following definition: sentence := an expression in some logical language (formula, axiom, assertion).
    7. Mike said that in a formal language, sentences denote propositions. We use the sentence to refer to the proposition. So if sentence X represents proposition P, presumably we'd have to link Sentence X to a probability value in order to represent the fact that the proposition P has a given probability value. Giorgios agreed.
    8. Mike wanted more to be said about expression.
    9. Francis made a comment on Peter bringing agents into play. Peter added that semantic web is about machine replacing what humans understand, and asked us to see TBL article in SA.
    10. Anne proposed the following rephrasing: probability is connected to probability distributions that describe the distributions of measurable dimensions (physical etc) that exist in the world.
    11. A caveat: expression might be lots of things, not all of them having truth-values.
    12. Kathy said that "Giorgos' hair" is an expression but it doesn't have uncertainty, while "Giorgos has brown hair" has a truth-value. Giorgios replied that if Fred is a constant then it is not an expression and can have uncertainty. Mike added that, in linguistics, a sentence is a unit of language, characterized in most languages by the presence of a finite verb. For example, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." It depends on your definition of expression.
    13. Anne said that her earlier point was that probability does not attach to a sentence but to what it asserts about the (partial) state of the world. What about "assertion"?
    14. Paulo proposed the following rephrasing to Giorgios definition: Sentence := an expression in some logical language (formula, axiom, assertion) to which one can attach a truth value. Giorgions made a comment that axioms do not have truth values but could have uncertainty attached. Peter replied that axioms have truth values, comutativeness in noncommutative group, axiom of choice in a model of non AC,... Giorgios added that Man subsumed-by Human does not have a truth-degree, and that maybe he was not very comfortable with the use of the term truth-value, as it brought in mind fuzziness. Paulo asked that discussions about incompleteness, types of uncertainty, attaching fuzzy values to assertions, etc should go to the Wiki.
    15. Mike added that a sentence is something that expresses a relationship between one or more objects and/or an attribute of one or more things. Peter asked a more specific statement, what can be an uncertainty of Fred? Anne added that she prefers to use assertion because it requires that something is asserted about the world and this is what the probability is attached to.
    16. Kathy noted that we were essentially in agreement that a sentence is an expression in a language that can have a truth-value. Peter agreed. Paulo asked that we should continue the discussions on the definition of sentence in the Wiki.
    17. Ken asked whether anyone is following RIF; Giorgos said he is. (ACTION 6) Giorgos will summarize RIF work relevant to us at a future telecon.

  6. Establish/review discussion schedule for next several meetings.

    1. We need to compile some threads that ran across use cases.
    2. Initial list of topics to next meeting's agenda:
      1. Editing committee tell us their plans
      2. Giorgos give a report on RIF.
      3. ... and possibly a use case.
      4. ... and common threads that go across use cases.
      5. Approve the last two minutes.

  7. Other business.

    1. (ACTION 7) Everyone add to Wiki discussion of sentence.

Action items

  1. ACTION (1): Ken to check how to embed figures into Wiki page.
  2. ACTION (2): Kathy to make a Wiki list of those attending ISWC workshop.
  3. ACTION (3): Kathy will send an email asking people who will attend URSW to put their names on a Wiki.
  4. ACTION (4): Paulo, Trevor and Mitch will communicate among themselves to do the organization of the editing team. For the next meeting, they need to report the editing team strategy.
  5. ACTION (5): Ken will send an email asking who else volunteers to the editing team while also announcing the current volunteers.
  6. ACTION (6): Giorgos will summarize RIF work relevant to us at a future telecon.
  7. ACTION (7): Everyone add to Wiki discussion of sentence.