In the spirit of the previous post, some oldies goodies of the first year of this blog.
- Subject Identity (2004-08-17) on difficulty of subject identification. The reference thread on topic map list is one year older. Just replace "topic map" by "triple store" or "RDF graph", and "topics" by "resources", and see that this critical question is still largely open.The core requirement for semantic interoperability of [topic map] applications is interagreement on subject identification mechanisms, enabling both humans and applications to establish when and how different topics, either from the same topic map or different ones, should be interpreted as representing the same subject and processed accordingly.
- Identification as an experimental protocol (2004-08-29) ... have we made any progress on this topic? Meanwile astronomers still prepare the GAIA mission, due to lift off in 2013.
- Wikipedia URLs as Subject codes (2005-02-03) ... Jack Park anticipation, two years before DBpedia first release.Wikipedia appears popular enough that its URLs might serve at least one important aspect of the subject identity issue ...
Indeed, more than the volatile and questionable content of DBpedia descriptions, it's the permanence and reliability of DBpedia URIs as subject indicators which makes them a core component of the Semantic Web.
