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Matt,<br>
I think there has been sentiment in the past to develop additional
informative documents to go along with (but not be a part of) our
standards that would provide more examples, how-to's etc. That would
certainly be helpful for a group wanting to develop a controlled
vocabulary. At this point we want to get things right in the standards
documents themselves (particularly the normative parts). The helpful
ancillary documents can be developed as we get more experience applying
the standard, kind of like what's going on with the DwC Q&A site. <br>
Steve<br>
<br>
Matt Yoder wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAOeBncg+4jBf0G=rVkfEcU5G0Q7ym5jvZPf1aNPjcGew-DBC0g@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Steve,
Well I'm not sure if +1s are worthwhile, but I think you nicely
defined the issues.
I hope that people don't get caught up on the "preferred labels"
issue. If it is the major issue then an ontology may be overkill
(e.g. why bother minting a URI if for all intents and practical
purposes you're going to require a unique string reference). I think
that CVs could be ontologies, or SKOS concept schemes, either should
lead to improvements, both are in theory better than simple strings.
* I'm a user who is unhappy with what is being expressed under a DC term
* I want to propose an improvement (let's call this a CV)
* I understand what I want to emphasize (e.g. precision, simplicity of
reference, ability to infer, ability to compute, multi-lingual
support, ability to quickly amend, ability to prevent quick changes,
ability to quickly select, etc.)
* I consult a bullet point list that describes the pros/cons of using
a SKOS or an ontology
* I select one or the other formalization, and use it to propose the improvement
A simple bullet point list that specifically points out the pros/cons
of using SKOS vs. an ontology would be key in this scenario. If I use
X I get Y,Z, if I use A I get B,C. Where YZBC are things the user
wants to emphasize.
Matt
On Sat, Mar 11, 2017 at 8:50 AM, Steve Baskauf
<a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:steve.baskauf@vanderbilt.edu"><steve.baskauf@vanderbilt.edu></a> wrote:
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<pre wrap="">At the TDWG meeting in December, I led an informative session describing the
main points of the draft Standards Documentation Specification (SDS) and its
sister standard, the draft Vocabulary Management Specification. At that
session, some participants seem to be taken aback at the prescription by the
SDS that controlled vocabularies should be SKOS concept schemes rather than
ontologies. There wasn't enough time at the meeting to fully explore that
issue and I hoped that it would come up for further discussion during the
public comment period.
We are now midway through the 30 day public comment period on the SDS and so
far, that issue has not come up. I was recently listening to the recording
of John Wieczorek's nice Darwin Core Hour presentation on controlled
vocabularies and it was apparent to me that the creation of controlled
vocabularies is an issue of interest to many in the community. So I've
written a blog post
(<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://baskauf.blogspot.com/2017/03/controlled-values-again.html">http://baskauf.blogspot.com/2017/03/controlled-values-again.html</a>) that
attempts to explain in non-technical terms how the SDS specifies that
controlled vocabularies should be expressed in machine-readable form. For
those who are interested in the gory details, I've also included at the end
a more detailed explanation of the rationale for specifying that controlled
vocabularies should, in most cases, be described as SKOS concept schemes
rather than ontologies.
If you care about the creation of controlled vocabularies, you should take a
look at this post and create an official comment if there are things you
don't like about the approach taken in the proposed specification. Our
review manager, Dag Endresen, has requested that issues be raised on the
issue tracker at <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://github.com/tdwg/vocab/issues">https://github.com/tdwg/vocab/issues</a> . However,
historically back-and-forth discussion about proposed standards has also
taken place on this list, so I think that responding here for clarification
and discussion would be appropriate prior to submitting an official comment.
Steve
--
Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
postal mail address:
PMB 351634
Nashville, TN 37235-1634, U.S.A.
delivery address:
2125 Stevenson Center
1161 21st Ave., S.
Nashville, TN 37235
office: 2128 Stevenson Center
phone: (615) 343-4582, fax: (615) 322-4942
If you fax, please phone or email so that I will know to look for it.
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu">http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vanderbilt.edu/trees">http://vanderbilt.edu/trees</a>
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<pre wrap=""><!---->
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
postal mail address:
PMB 351634
Nashville, TN 37235-1634, U.S.A.
delivery address:
2125 Stevenson Center
1161 21st Ave., S.
Nashville, TN 37235
office: 2128 Stevenson Center
phone: (615) 343-4582, fax: (615) 322-4942
If you fax, please phone or email so that I will know to look for it.
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu">http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://vanderbilt.edu/trees">http://vanderbilt.edu/trees</a>
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