Talk:BORO

Notability
I don't see much reference to this method on Google aside from this article and mirrors/restatements of it; and I note that this article and IDEAS Group were edited mostly by a single user User:IanDBailey --which in and of itself isn't a problem, but it makes me wonder if this article (and IDEAS Group) should be checked first for notability and then for possible conflict of interest/self-promotion. Thanks.BrideOfKripkenstein (talk) 20:06, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
 * Per the above concerns, I've marked the article for proposed deletion. BrideOfKripkenstein (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 16:32, 27 December 2010 (UTC).

The BORO Methodology is documented in a book published by Butterworth Heinemann. Wikipedia is littered with methodologies that don't have anything like that provenance. Is there another motive for wanting to delete the page ? It is currently used by the UK Ministry of Defence and the US Department of Defense.

The IDEAS Group is body that was stood up by the defence departments of Australia, Canada, Sweden, UK and USA. I think that makes it fairly notable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by IanDBailey (talk • contribs) 19:22, 3 January 2011 (UTC)


 * agreed that Wikipedia is full of even worse articles on even less notable methodology. But it's time we started cleaning up this morass. This particular article is close enough to information science that I can understand what there is to understand. I can also see the manner of publication, and the extent of references. I think it is borderline notable at best, but the article is written as if it were a promotional web p. for the method.  The key publication seems to be Partridge's one book; Worldcat shows it in only 97 libraries., & G Scholar shows it cited only 47 times.  There is  Some examples: "For example, the ISO standard, ISO 15926 - Industrial automation systems and integration – was heavily influenced by an early version. "  This translates,  that the iso standard is not based on it, but was just "influenced" to an unspecified extent, with no documentation provided for even that . "The method has been presented several times, including a recent 2hr tutorial at the Integrated Enterprise Architecture Conference in London in 2008. It was also presented at the UK Ministry of Defence's EKIG conference in October 2009."  A method that has been presented only at two   conferences, neither apparently being peer reviewed presentation, is not notable; perhaps there were others, but if these were the highlights.... .  There seems to be only 1 peer-reviewed paper, "The challenge of epistemic divergence in IS development". It was published in 2009--G Scholar has it cited only once, and the overall bibliometric on him at  shows a negligible influence on the profession.  (otherwise I might suggest an article on him) . Almost all the other work  is technical reports. Technical reports can be very important in computer science, but all of these seem to be produced by the firm trying to commercialize the method. And then I noticed something really interesting: the Wikipedia article does not describe the method!  It just says it exists. The section labelled description first says that it is a " simple, repeatable process for developing formal ontologies"  but then says it is only technically an ontology at all, & is not one operationally in the usual information science sense.  (I translate that as hand-waving, presumably due too the lack of meaning.) If its simple it can be described, if it is meaningful.
 * what I would like to see is a rewritten article that actually has sources for all of its assertions, that has third party sources showing notability, and that describes what it is talking about. I advise you to do this very quickly, before the article gets nominated for deletion by a regular deletion process. 48 hours, maybe?  If it's real, you have the references.    DGG ( talk ) 04:47, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

I think Chris has now been in and added several more references (including a number of peer reviewed conferences). As I have time, I will also make some edits. There is a somewhat simplistic flowchart for BORO too. I will ask Chris if he thinks it's suitable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by IanDBailey (talk • contribs) 10:02, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Some of the points above are not correct.

"Technical reports can be very important in computer science, but all of these seem to be produced by the firm trying to commercialize the method." The technical reports were written for LADSEB-CNR the Italian Government's Research arm, who are not trying to commercialise the method (they are legally forbidden to). LADSEB-CNR are a one of the world's leading research departments in this area. They have now moved to Trento - their site is http://www.loa-cnr.it/ - they have the papers on their site. It is standard practice in these research establishments for initial research to be published in technical reports.

"There seems to be only 1 peer-reviewed paper, "The challenge of epistemic divergence in IS development". This is not true. All of the following were peer-reviewed though presented at conferences. Note: a prior reviewer asked for references to be included. Partridge, C. and M. Stefanova. (2001) A Synthesis of State of the Art Enterprise Ontologies: Lessons Learned. Open Enterprise Solutions: Systems, Experiences, and Organizations (OES-SEO 2001). A. D'Atri, A. Solvberg and L. Willcocks. Rome, Luiss Edizioni, Centro di Ricerca sui Sistemi Informativi: 130-133.Partridge, C. (2002). The Role of Ontology in Semantic Integration. Second International Workshop on Semantics of Enterprise Integration at OOPSLA 2002, Seattle. Partridge, C. (2002). What is a customer? The beginnings of a reference ontology for customer. 11th OOPSLA Workshop on behavioral semantics, Seattle, Washington, Northeastern. Daga, A (2005). Daga, A., de Cesare, S., Lycett, M. and Partridge, C., An Ontological Approach for Recovering Legacy Business Content, HICSS'05.

"It was published in 2009--G Scholar has it cited only once, and the overall bibliometric on him at " Note: the bibliometric is obviously only for the ACM as it only notes the one paper published by the ACM - it does not mention the other papers or book in the wiki entry. It is plainly NOT a "bibliometric on him", but is quoted here as one. G Scholar shows the citations for some of the other papers as: The role of ontology in integrating semantically heterogeneous databases - 25 citations. The Role of Ontology in Semantic Integration - 7 citations A Synthesis of State of the Art Enterprise Ontologies - 4 citations An ontological approach for recovering legacy business content - 9 citations What is Pump Facility PF101? - 4 citations.

The comments seem a little harsh - sites in the same domain do not seem to get the same treatment - e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Formal_Ontology

"the Wikipedia article does not describe the method! It just says it exists." This seems a little biased. There are references to a book, a number of articles and a number of sites that describe the method.

I am a little concerned at the quality of the comments, as some of the claims do not stand up to basic checking. Is there some agenda to these comments?

"but the article is written as if it were a promotional web p. for the method" That is not the intention, it is meant to be informational. Maybe the description section could be revised, but overall I cannot see the substance to this comment. If you could explain how you see it being improved, that would be useful. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chrispar (talk • contribs) 10:49, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

TravisClose (talk) 01:31, 7 January 2011 (UTC) In regards to the December 2010 deletion proposal for this entry, and as an external observer monitoring the activity... I see the authors making a concerted effort to increase the quality of the article by adding additional content, further describing the BORO Method, adding references, and actively discussing points of interest on the talk page. These items are all positive to the wikipedia community, and we should not be in such a haste to delete this entry without letting the scenario play out to its end. With this level of activity, I don't think it is appropriate to place any sort of time limit (such as 48 hours) to resolve issues...some of which may not have yet been introduced. A more realistic approach is to work through each issue and examine how the content can be revised to maximize the benefit to the wikipedia user community. If that takes 2 weeks or 2 months, we as a community still benefit. I will make further comments about the notability of the content tomorrow after I've had some time to put together my thoughts on this analysis method. Authors and Contributors: keep up the work you have been doing by further increasing the quality of this article (and thank you for contributing) TravisClose (talk) 01:31, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I suppose this comment needs answering. ""For example, the ISO standard, ISO 15926 - Industrial automation systems and integration – was heavily influenced by an early version. " This translates,  that the iso standard is not based on it, but was just "influenced" to an unspecified extent, with no documentation provided for even that." The majority of the work on ISO 15926 (Part 2) took place within the EPISTLE (European Process Industries STEP Technical Liaison Executive) Working group - which was standardised as ISO 15926 - though there were relevant discussions at the ISO meetings. The starting point was EPISTLE Core Model V2.0. It went through two sets of revisions, V3.x and V4.x. In these the major moves toward a BORO-based foundation were the shift to an extensional 4D ontology (and its associated criterion of identity) and the introduction of some set theoretic machinery - for example, powertypes. Not all the BORO foundation was taken on board; there were some areas where the original EPISTLE top level was retained. For example, the separation of binary and higher-arity relations (called multi_dimensional_object) - in BORO all relations are subsumed into a single category, whether binary, higher order or variable arity. I was involved in those meeting and I have talked to a number of other people who were involved and they all recall this being regarded as a major influence on the development at the time. Chrispar (talk) 11:06, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Etymology?
What exactly means "BORO"?--Nashev (talk) 16:25, 4 September 2014 (UTC)