[tdwg-tag] RDF/OWL Good Practices Task Group
Steve Baskauf
steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu
Fri Sep 23 23:03:13 CEST 2011
Hilmar,
I've been in class all afternoon so I haven't had time to look carefully
at your edits yet. But I wanted to make one comment about what you said
in your second paragraph. It is part of the nature of a task group that
it have a limited lifespan: the amount of time that it takes to complete
the task which it has been assigned. After that, the job of maintaining
the standard which the task group creates reverts to the interest group
which chartered it (I am paraphrasing here from my understanding of
http://www.tdwg.org/about-tdwg/process/). So if the RDF group is
actually a Task Group chartered by the TAG, then after its task is
completed, it will fall to the TAG to maintain the product that it creates.
The concerns that you raise below include some of the reasons why we had
initially suggested that the group be an Interest Group rather than a
Task Group. An interest group does not have a defined lifespan - it
exists as long as the interest exists. Unlike a Task Group, it does not
have to produce a defined product which
http://www.tdwg.org/about-tdwg/process/ implies (but does not explicitly
state) would be a standard of one of the flavors described in
http://www.tdwg.org/standards/status-and-categories/ (Technical
Specification, Applicability Statement, Best Current Practice, or Data
Standard).
The reason why we are currently proposing that the group be a Task Group
is primarily because several members of the TAG felt that was the most
appropriate thing. I think that I agree with them. However, I am still
uneasy about several aspects of chartering the group as a Task Group,
namely:
1. I don't really understand exactly who the TAG is (i.e. specifically,
who are the particular people to whom the RDF TG would be accountable?).
2. What precisely is the task whose completion will signal the end of
the life of the Task Group? We have put some benchmarks in the charter,
but none of them include the creation of a standard of any of the forms
I listed above. Is that OK for a Task Group? I don't know.
I certainly don't want to put a damper on the forward progress of the
group by asking these questions, because I'm excited about the prospect
of getting the group off the ground and because the TDWG meeting is only
weeks away. But at the moment we are engaging in a discussion within
the chartering group and I think it would be appropriate for some of the
TAG members to weigh in on these concerns. If it turns out that there
isn't really any answer to the question "who exactly is the TAG?" and
"what is our task?" then maybe chartering an Interest Group would be
more appropriate than a Task Group.
Steve
Hilmar Lapp wrote:
> Joel -
>
> I've made a number of edits. These are in part to put the motivation
> into a larger beyond-TDWG context, and in part to make it a little
> more future-proof. The charter in places read (to me) more like a
> workshop agenda than a charter, thus preempting decisions that the TG
> participants might (want to) make to a degree that I wasn't fully
> comfortable with. I've tried to make it take a step back.
>
> I also removed the sentence about handing off to the TAG after one
> year - while that may be what the participants indeed decide to do
> after one year, it's not what I'd want ingrained in the charter, and
> also a one-off mindset isn't necessarily what I'd like to start with.
> More to the point, if the TG (or whatever its successor(s)) doesn't
> maintain those documents, I'm afraid nobody will, and there is plenty
> of empirical evidence around the TDWG site to support that.
>
> -hilmar
>
> On Sep 19, 2011, at 3:46 PM, joel sachs wrote:
>
>
>> Greetings everyone,
>>
>> After some back and forth amongst Steve Baskauf, myself, Greg
>> Whitbread,
>> and the executive, we've decided to move forward with an RDF/OWL task
>> group, convened under the TAG. Our task will be to deliver a document
>> comprising
>> i. use cases and competency questions;
>> ii. well documented examples of addressing those use cases via rdf and
>> sparql; and
>> iii. discussion of advantages and disadvantages of the approaches
>> illustrated by the examples.
>>
>> Our draft charter is at
>> http://code.google.com/p/tdwg-rdf/wiki/CharterOfTG
>> and we welcome comments, suggestions, and better ideas. One area where
>> we're still open is the question of whether or not our deliverable
>> should
>> be an official Best Current Practice document [1]. The charter
>> reflects
>> our current feeling that it should not. After we deliver our "book
>> of use
>> cases and examples", options would include being re-chartered by the
>> TAG
>> to produce a best practices document, spinning off as a "Semantic Web
>> Interest Group", or disbanding (either in triumph or despair).
>>
>> When we were planning to convene as an Interest Group, several of you
>> accepted our invitation to serve as core members, and we hope that
>> convening as a Task Group does not change your willingness to do so.
>> If
>> you would like to be a core member of the group, and we haven't yet
>> contacted you, there's a good chance that we will. But don't wait!
>> Feel
>> free to volunteer for core membership. (And recall that you don't
>> have to
>> be a "core member to" contribute.)
>>
>> In regards timeline, I'd like to incorporate any feedback we
>> receive, and
>> submit the charter to the executive at the end of this week, in
>> hopes of
>> being chartered by New Orleans.
>>
>> Many thanks!
>> Joel.
>>
>> 1. http://www.tdwg.org/standards/status-and-categories/
>>
>>
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>
>
--
Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
postal mail address:
VU Station B 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) 343-6707
http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu
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