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John,<br>
<br>
Although I see merits to parts of this proposal (particularly making
some document other than dwctermshistory.rdf as the normative
document), I think it may be premature to propose such a large body of
changes. In particular, proposing to make an RDF document the only
part of the standard is at odds with the approach taken by Audubon
Core, where the normative document is human-readable, and there is
(currently) no RDF version of the vocabulary. I have heard the opinion
expressed by the Audubon Core authors that an RDF document should NOT
be the normative document of a standard. So I'm pretty sure that there
won't be an immediate consensus on apply that idea TDWG-wide.<br>
<br>
Fixing the stalled TDWG Standards Documentation Specification [1] and
adopting a TDWG-wide policy for maintaining vocabulary standards has
been a longstanding problem, as noted in the Vocabulary Management Task
Group report [2]. At the end of October, I was asked by the Executive
to work on chartering a Vocabulary Maintenance Specification task group
that would be charged with addressing these issues, including dealing
with the stalled Standards Documentation Specification and a TDWG-wide
alternative to the Darwin Core namespace policy [3]. I agreed to take
on the job, but told the Executive that I would be too busy to start on
it until after December. It would be great to have you, Peter, and
Markus serving as core members of the task group if you are willing,
along with others who have experience with standards documentation and
maintenance. <br>
<br>
Steve<br>
<br>
[1] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.tdwg.org/standards/147/">http://www.tdwg.org/standards/147/</a><br>
[2] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.gbif.org/resources/2246">http://www.gbif.org/resources/2246</a><br>
[3] <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/namespace/">http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/namespace/</a><br>
<br>
John Wieczorek wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAHwKGGf-H0HAJ2mKAp2K1y51rm8QjWWvciK3aZWtPmcP87x0Cw@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
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<p
style="margin-bottom: 16px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,'Segoe UI',Arial,freesans,sans-serif; font-size: 13.6364px; line-height: 20.3636px; margin-top: 0px ! important;">Dear
all,</p>
<p
style="margin-bottom: 16px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,'Segoe UI',Arial,freesans,sans-serif; font-size: 13.6364px; line-height: 20.3636px; margin-top: 0px ! important;">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.</p>
<p
style="margin-bottom: 16px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,'Segoe UI',Arial,freesans,sans-serif; font-size: 13.6364px; line-height: 20.3636px; margin-top: 0px ! important;">We
would like to propose that the <strong>RDF document of current terms</strong> be
made to represent the <strong>normative standard for Darwin Core</strong>
rather than <b>Complete History normative document</b> we use now. We
would also like to make that new normative document the only document
in the standard. </p>
<p
style="margin-bottom: 16px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,'Segoe UI',Arial,freesans,sans-serif; font-size: 13.6364px; line-height: 20.3636px; margin-top: 0px ! important;"><span
style="font-size: 13.6364px; line-height: 20.3636px;">Under this
proposal:</span><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;"><font
color="#333333"
face="Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Segoe UI, Arial, freesans, sans-serif"><span
style="font-size: 13.6364px; line-height: 20.3636px;">1) the normative
standard for Darwin Core would consist of a single document at </span></font><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://rs.tdwg.org/terms/dwc_normative.rdf">http://rs.tdwg.org/terms/dwc_normative.rdf</a>
(not currently active).</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;"><br>
<font color="#333333"
face="Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Segoe UI, Arial, freesans, sans-serif"><span
style="font-size: 13.6364px; line-height: 20.3636px;">2) information
currently held in </span></font><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/rdf/dwctermshistory.rdf"
style="color: rgb(65, 131, 196); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,'Segoe UI',Arial,freesans,sans-serif; font-size: 13.6364px; line-height: 20.3636px; text-decoration: none; background-color: transparent;">http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/rdf/dwctermshistory.rdf</a><font
color="#333333"
face="Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Segoe UI, Arial, freesans, sans-serif"><span
style="font-size: 13.6364px; line-height: 20.3636px;"> (the current
normative document) and the corresponding Complete History web page (</span><span
style="line-height: 20.3636px;"><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/history/index.htm">http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/history/index.htm</a></span><span
style="font-size: 13.6364px; line-height: 20.3636px;">) would be
retained only in a history document </span></font><a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://rs.tdwg.org/terms/history.html">http://rs.tdwg.org/terms/history.html</a>
(not currently active)<font color="#333333"
face="Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Segoe UI, Arial, freesans, sans-serif"><span
style="font-size: 13.6364px; line-height: 20.3636px;">.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;"><font
color="#333333"
face="Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Segoe UI, Arial, freesans, sans-serif"><span
style="font-size: 13.6364px; line-height: 20.3636px;"><br>
</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;"><font
color="#333333"
face="Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Segoe UI, Arial, freesans, sans-serif"><span
style="font-size: 13.6364px; line-height: 20.3636px;">3) all documents
other than the proposed normative document would not be part of the
standard.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;"><font
color="#333333"
face="Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Segoe UI, Arial, freesans, sans-serif"><span
style="font-size: 13.6364px; line-height: 20.3636px;"><br>
</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;"><font
color="#333333"
face="Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Segoe UI, Arial, freesans, sans-serif"><span
style="font-size: 13.6364px; line-height: 20.3636px;">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.</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;"><font
color="#333333"
face="Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Segoe UI, Arial, freesans, sans-serif"><span
style="font-size: 13.6364px; line-height: 20.3636px;"><br>
</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;"><font
color="#333333"
face="Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Segoe UI, Arial, freesans, sans-serif"><span
style="font-size: 13.6364px; line-height: 20.3636px;">The implications
of this proposal are many. One of the most important is that the rules
governing changes to the standard (</span><span
style="line-height: 20.3636px;"><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/namespace/index.htm">http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/namespace/index.htm</a></span></font><span
style="font-size: 13.6364px; line-height: 20.3636px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,'Segoe UI',Arial,freesans,sans-serif;">)
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.</span></p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;">Other
comments about the proposed changes:</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;">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.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;">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?</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;"><font
color="#333333"
face="Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Segoe UI, Arial, freesans, sans-serif"><span
style="font-size: 13.6364px; line-height: 20.3636px;"><br>
</span></font></p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;"><font
color="#333333"
face="Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Segoe UI, Arial, freesans, sans-serif"><span
style="line-height: 20.3636px;">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</span></font><span
style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,'Segoe UI',Arial,freesans,sans-serif; font-size: 13.3333px; line-height: 20.3636px;"> the
requirements of public review and Executive Committee approval. This
would make that documentation </span><span
style="font-size: 13.6364px; line-height: 20.3636px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,'Segoe UI',Arial,freesans,sans-serif;">much
more open to broader contributions and easier to adapt to evolving
demands.</span></p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;">We do not
propose to lose any of the documentation we have.</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;">Please
share your comments!</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;">Cheers,</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px ! important;">John</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
postal mail address:
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