I was filing emails and re-read this one. I just wanted to clarify one thing about the categories of standards documents. There is currently no standard that specifies how standards should be documented. There is a draft Standards Documentation Specification (http://www.tdwg.org/standards/147/ viewable online at http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu/pages/tdwg-stds-spec.pdf ) but its ratification has been stalled for about five years. The Vocabulary Management Task Group (VoMaG) has recommended (http://community.gbif.org/pg/file/read/34059/ Recommendation 12; please read and comment as the public comment period is going on now!) that a new author team be tasked with writing an updated version of this draft standard. Nevertheless, it is the only guideline we have at the moment.
What the existing Standards Documentation Specification document says is that standards documents fall into three categories: Type 1 (normative) documents - which define the standard, Type 2 (non-normative) documents - which explain and justify the standard and which ARE part of the standard, and Type 3 (informative) documents - which provide helpful information but which are NOT actually part of the standard itself and therefore aren't governed by the TDWG Standards process (http://www.tdwg.org/about-tdwg/process/ ). To illustrate this with Darwin Core, the single normative (Type 1) RDF document is http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/source/browse/trunk/rdf/dwctermshistory.... . There are many (I think hundreds) of non-normative (Type 2) documents that are part of the standard, notably web pages like the term Quick Reference Guide http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm and the XML Guide http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/guides/xml/index.htm . The pages on the Darwin Core Google Code site (e.g. http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/wiki/Occurrence ) are Type 3 documents. It requires an official act in accordance with the DwC Namespace policy (http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/namespace/index.htm ) to change a Type 2 document. Type 3 documents can be changed at any time with no official action required.
As far as Darwin Core RDF Guide is concerned, the Guide document itself would become a Type 2 document (non-normative) and part of the Darwin Core Standard. Its acceptance is governed by the Standards process and therefore requires public comment, etc. Any term additions and changes (such as the addition of the proposed dwcuri: namespace terms) which are accepted would be made to the Type 1 RDF document as well as to the Type 2 human-readable pages that serve as reference. The RDF examples (e.g. http://code.google.com/p/tdwg-rdf/wiki/DwcRdfExamplesTaxonConcept and http://code.google.com/p/tdwg-rdf/wiki/DwcRdfExamplesDarwinSW ) which are not included in the actual Guide would be Type 3 documents. They aren't governed by the Standards Process and could reside on either the RDF Task Group Google Code wiki, the Darwin Core Google Code site, or any other place where we might decide to put that kind of reference document (e.g. on the GBIF site if the VoMaG group gets it set up).
I hope this clarifies the situation. There has been a lot of confusion about this in the past. Steve
joel sachs wrote:
guide. But what if the release gets delayed a couple of years? Then the normative (Type 1) part of the standard will appear to be in conflict with the non-normative (Type 2) RDF examples. From a purely technical point of view, this isn't a problem, since Type 1 documents take precedence over Type 2 documents. But it's a situation we want to avoid.