I'm on John's side on this, but it is not necessarily an easy path forward if you want the CVs to work with multiple technologies and tools. That remains a research problem that is addressed in more than one pending proposal to the U.S. NSF's SI2 program http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2010/nsf10551/nsf10551.htm As an example, while http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/rdf/dwcterms.rdf will load on its own into Protege 4.1beta, and attempt to import it into an otherwise valid OWL ontology throws a NullPointerException. (This is probably a simple programming error, but in general, Protege4 has design propensities favoring actual OWL ontologies. The result is that even where dwc.rdf loads, the perfectly reasonable minimalist style of dwc.rdf causes all terms to appear as individuals instead of properties. That shouldn't impede their use in an OWL ontology, but the UI of Protege makes it unpleasant, if not impossible). On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 12:29 PM, John Wieczorek <tuco@berkeley.edu> wrote:
On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 9:20 AM, Mark Wilden <mark@mwilden.com> wrote:
On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 7:28 AM, John Wieczorek <tuco@berkeley.edu> wrote:
Recommended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary.
This sounds like an incorrect usage of the term "best practice," to me. It can't be a "best practice" to do something that is impossible, and if a controlled vocabulary doesn't exist... As you indicate, this has a requirement that hasn't yet been met.
It is not a requirement, it is a recommendation. It is not impossible, just make a vocabulary. Well, hopefully with some community buy-in and open access. GBIF's vocabulary registry (http://vocabularies.gbif.org/) comes to mind as a solution.
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