Re-Formalizing owl:sameas: Iterating Meaning-Making in a Computer Ontology Language

Computer ontology languages aggregate a number of properties that can be used to model knowledge for machine consumption. These languages are increasingly playing a role in gatekeeping the conveyance and dissemination of knowledge. This article presents a cultural analysis of owl:sameas-a property in a computer ontology language that seeks to formalize representations of identity and sameness in online databases. In this article, I examine the 're-formalizing practices' of the community of practitioners that revisited the specifications for owl:sameas after the standard was widely put to use in not so standard ways. Re-formalizing practices refer to the social activities that designers engage as they confront the contingency and mutability of formal representations. I argue that designers engaging re-formalizing practices can at times buckle down on the stability of certain logical properties even while appearing to make knowledge modeling more fluid; at other times, re-formalizing practices can invite more freeplay in a modeling practice, decentering the authors of ontology languages as central to meaning-making. This work furthers understanding of, not only how ontology languages delimit representational affordances, but also how social understandings of the meaning and appropriate use of their properties are enacted and iterate over time.