Re: ISSUE-41 (alt/alternative): use of skos:altLabel or dcterms:alternative [Registered Organization Vocabulary]

Hi Phil,

I'm OK with your approach but suggest a slight tweak below.

On 28/02/13 10:39, Phil Archer wrote:
> I realise that this issue has lain dormant for too long but as ORG is
> now close to CR (I hope!) this needs picking up. Apologies as usual for
> my own tardiness.
>
>
> I'm happy for skos:altLabel to be used rather than dcterms:alternative.
> As justification:
>
> - it's in line with ORG;
> - it's what the linked data community prefers.
>
> That's enough for me.

Great.

> So the question then is what to do about skos:prefLabel/rov:legalName?
> How about this:
>
> - leave ORG's use of skos:prefLabel untouched;
> - keep rov:legalName;
> - change the current definition of rov:legalName from:
>
> The legal name of the business. A business might have more than one
> legal name, particularly in countries with more than one official
> language. In such cases, and where the encoding technology allows, the
> language of the string should be identified.
>
> To
>
> In line with the ORG Ontology, the legal name of the registered
> Organization should be given using skos:prefLabel property. However,
> there are some jurisdictions in which multiple legal names are
> recognized in the same language which would lead to multiple instances
> of the skos:prefLabel property tagged with the same language for the
> same entity. This is inconsistent with SKOS; therefore, RegOrg provides
> the rov:legalName property specifically to allow for multiple labels of
> equal primary status in the same language.
>
> For clarity:
> - always use skos:prefLabel to give a legally recognized name of a
> registered organization;
> - where there are multiple legal names for a registered organization in
> multiple languages, but only one name per language, again, use
> skos:prefLabel (with language tags);
> - where there are multiple legal names in the same language, use
> rov:legalName for those *additional* legal names.
>
> Alternative names with no legal standing, such as trading names and
> colloquial names, should be given using skos:altLabel.
>
> It means that skos:prefLabel will always be present and rov:legalName
> where it's needed - which is less than ideal, but seems like a practical
> way forward?

Seems reasonable, though as you say not ideal.

How about one small variant to this approach. We could make 
rov:legalName a super property of skos:prefLabel.

So whenever there is a unique legal name we need only use skos:prefLabel 
and this also implies rov:legalName.

That way there would always be (at least implicitly) a rov:legalName and 
a skos:prefLabel, it's just that there might be additional 
rov:legalNames as well.

We can then choose whether to encourage publishers to materialize this 
inference and explicitly state both in cases where there are both but at 
least we would have made the relationship between the two clear.

Dave

Received on Thursday, 28 February 2013 11:53:52 UTC