[tdwg-content] Darwin Core Standard - proposed change in governance

[Hilmar Lapp]

I fully support this. It's been long overdue. -hilmar

On 1/20/15, 10:18 AM, John Wieczorek wrote:
>
> Dear all,
>
> Peter Desmet, Markus Döring, and I have been working on the transition
> of Darwin Core maintenance from the Google Code Site to Github. We've
> taken the opportunity to streamline the process of making updates to
> the standard when they are ratified, such as scripts to produce the
> human-readable content and auxiliary files from the RDF document of
> current terms. As a result of this work, we see further opportunities
> to simplify the maintenance of the standard. They center on the
> following proposal.
>
> We would like to propose that the *RDF document of current terms* be
> made to represent the *normative standard for Darwin Core* rather than
> *Complete History normative document* we use now. We would also like
> to make that new normative document the only document in the standard. 
>
> Under this proposal:
>
> 1) the normative standard for Darwin Core would consist of a single
> document at http://rs.tdwg.org/terms/dwc_normative.rdf (not currently
> active).
>
>
> 2) information currently held
> in http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/rdf/dwctermshistory.rdf (the current
> normative document) and the corresponding Complete History web page
> (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/history/index.htm) would be retained
> only in a history document http://rs.tdwg.org/terms/history.html (not
> currently active).
>
>
> 3) all documents other than the proposed normative document would not
> be part of the standard.
>
>
> The proposed changes require community consensus under the existing
> rules of governance of the Darwin Core. This means that the proposal
> must be under public review for at least 30 days after an apparent
> consensus on the proposal and any amendments to it is reached, where
> consensus consists of no publicly-shared opposition.
>
>
> The implications of this proposal are many. One of the most important
> is that the rules governing changes to the standard
> (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/namespace/index.htm) would no longer be
> a part of the standard. Instead, we would promote the adoption of
> these rules across TDWG standards rather than just within Darwin Core.
> It may be that TDWG is not ready to accommodate this at the moment. If
> so, the Namespace Policy could remain within the Darwin Core standard
> until the broader governance process for TDWG can cover it, at which
> point we would propose to remove the Namespace Policy from the Darwin
> Core.
>
>
> Other comments about the proposed changes:
>
>
> Having one RDF document for the terms in the dwc namespace will avoid
> confusion. Only those with status 'recommended' would be in the
> normative document.
>
>
> Having the term history (all versions, including deprecated,
> superseded, and recommended ones) in a web page only is what Dublin
> Core does. It means no one would be able to reason over old versions
> of the Darwin Core. Would anyone do that?
>
>
> Having no document other than the normative one as part of the
> standard would free the whole rest of the body of Darwin Core
> documentation from the requirements of public review and Executive
> Committee approval. This would make that documentation much more open
> to broader contributions and easier to adapt to evolving demands.
>
>
> We do not propose to lose any of the documentation we have.
>
>
> Please share your comments!
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>
> John
>
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-- 
Hilmar Lapp -:- genome.duke.edu -:- lappland.io
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