Minutes for 11 July 2007 URW3 Meeting

Attendees:

Agenda:

  1. Approve minutes from 27 June 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 report outline as specified in July 11 agenda.
  4. Review purpose of use cases and guidelines to structure use case discussions.
  5. Discuss Recommendation and Belief Fusion use cases. (In preparation, please read these use cases.)
  6. Establish/review discussion schedule for next several meetings
  7. Schedule telecons for July and August
  8. Other business

Scribe: Mike Pool

Discussion summary:

General note: The audio quality during the call was exceptionally poor. The cause of the problem remains unclear.

  1. Minutes from previous meeting were approved without discussion.

  2. Review status of action items from previous meeting

    Action 1: There was some discussion of difficulties with saving edits. Peter noted to Kathy that removing the ACL line will allow one not to lose previous contents, but one does lose the new changes. Kathy suggested that saving line by line may help.

    Action 2: Discussion of ‘sentence’ in the uncertainty ontology is ongoing and should probably continue offline. We can use the discussion section of the ‘Wiki’ or email to discuss further.

    Action 5: Ken will solicit summer meeting time conflicts in an email. (action item)

  3. Discuss report outline: We discussed the final report outline as proposed by Ken in the agenda. 

             Initial XG report outline
            -------------------------------
            I. Introduction (what is problem)
            II. Use case compilation
                  A. Intent and process (including uncertainty ontology)
                  B. Collected use cases
                       1. For each use case
                            a. Use case description (from wiki)
                            b. Aspects of uncertainty reasoning demonstrated by this use case
                            c. Methodologies that can be applied
                            d. Information needed to support methodology that is not currently captured through standards
                       2..n Use cases 2..n
            III. Opportunities for standardization
                  A. Goals of standardization
                  B. Aspects of uncertainty reasoning for potential standardization
                       (common aspects identified in use cases)
                  C. Methodologies that would be supported by potential standardization
            IV. Recommendations
                  A. Overall conclusions of XG work
                  B. Specific recommendations for standardization (if any)
            Appendix - methodology references

    1. Kathy asked whether the uncertainty ontology discussion belongs in the use case section, suggested it should be separated out into a separate section. Claudia concurred.
    2. Standardization section should perhaps go after use cases, Peter suggested.
    3. Mitch suggested that in section 3 of the final report, perhaps we should focus on *needs* for standardization rather than opportunities. Others noted that this section should be a discussion of the needs for and benefits of standardization.
    4. Kathy suggested that the ‘Intent and Process’ should be a separate section. Claudia concurred.
    5. There was some discussion of creating a Wiki page reflecting the outline of the final report so that people could start working on it and adding content as we go. Ken wondered whether it’s prudent to start adding to the final report already. A Wiki page for comments related to the final report will be set up. [Action Item]
    6. Peter suggested that after each use case discussion we should attempt to get some summary or input into the XG report.

  4. We spent some time discussing Ken’s guidelines for use case discussions. Ken noted the importance of linking use cases to the ontology both for purposes of keeping things focused but also for purposes of identifying gaps in the proposed ontology. Mitch suggested that we walk through a test case using Ken’s guidelines. It was also noted that using the ontology could Some other points that came up during this discussion:
    1. There was some related discussion concerning the uncertainty ontology. Peter suggested that we extend the ontology to include particular instances, extend TBox with an ABox if we think in description logic terms.
    2. Anne suggested that we merge some use cases and asked about RSS feeds for Wiki updates.
    3. Kathy asked who wrote the "there have been many attempts to define an uncertainty ontology" section and requested that references be provided.
    4. Mike, Kathy and Peter all agreed that the “disagreements” section on the main ontology page should be moved to the discussion section.
    5. Ken noted that some very specific suggestions should happen between the telecons rather than during.

  5. Matthias led a discussion of the Recommendation and Belief Fusion use cases. Discussion points included the following:
    1. In response to the question of which elements of the uncertainty ontology, Mitch observed that fuzziness was relevant to representing requirements as well as match of those requirements.
    2. Kathy asked for clarification on the notion of scale and preference and Mitch noted that they are similar, or perhaps the same.
    3. We also discussed which sort of thing holds uncertainties, i.e., what is uncertain. Mitch and Anne suggested that assertions, not sentences, are the things of which uncertainty values hold. Mike suggested that it be propositions, in the sense of the “the meaning of a sentence that is invariant through all the paraphrases and translations of the sentence”. Peter observed that we should utilize the W3C meanings of terms where those exist. Kathy observed that a system might assign different uncertainty values to 2 different logically equivalent sentences, and that that could be a problem for the claim that propositions hold uncertainties.
    4. Anne noted that not all beliefs can be represented as numerical values because it glosses over inconsistencies.

  6. Establish/review discussion schedule for next several meetings. Ken will look for people willing to discuss other use cases.

  7. We had some brief discussion of scheduling of the next telecom. July 25 is AAAI-07 and July 27 is FuzzIEEE.

  8. Francis Fung moved to adjourn the meeting, seconded by Mike.

Action items

  1. ACTION (1): Ken will set up a Wiki page for discussing the final report. [recorded in http://http://www.w3.org/2007/07/11-urw3-minutes.html#action04]
  2. ACTION (2): Ken will send around an email to determine the dates that work best for July/August telecons. [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/07/11-urw3-minutes.html#action05]
  3. ACTION (3): All will continue to attempt to resolve discussion of ‘sentence’ via email and Wiki discussions.
  4. ACTION (4): Find someone to discuss a use case at future meeting.