On Mon, 24 Jun 2013, John Deck wrote:
While i agree that house cleaning is in order, I think it would be a big mistake to accept no new additions to the standard in the interim. Perhaps a strategy is to shoot for a "major release" version (say with a target 1 year out) while continuing with current modifications to the existing standard.
John, I'm not against that strategy, but I do think it's dangerous, since the proposed modifications make significant assumptions about how the existing standard is both interpreted and applied.
One example: Suppose the DwC RDF guide is adopted in its current form. Then, dwctype:occurrence will be the standard rdf:type for what we commonly call occurrences. But most readers of the current Darwin Core standard come to the conclusion that *dwc:occurrence* is the rdf:type of what we commonly call occurrences. You could argue that this isn't so bad, because then the next major release of Darwin Core can be informed by the RDF 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.
Best, Joel.
John
On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 3:45 PM, joel sachs jsachs@csee.umbc.edu wrote: Hi Everyone,
Darwin Core remains poorly documented, occasionally inconsistent, and frequently misunderstood. (Does anyone disagree with that characterization?) I believe this is one of the reasons we're seeing a proliferation of overlapping and sometimes incompatible ontologies building on Darwin Core terms. One of the suggestions that came up on the TDWG-RDF mailing list is to have a clean-up-a-thon/document-a-thon for TDWG namespaces and terms. I suggest that, until such a clean up of Darwin Core occurs, TDWG accept no additions to the Darwin Core standard. There are several examples in support of my claim that we're building on a shaky foundation - an obvious one is that, as Steve is currently pointing out, there is no consensus on what constitutes a Darwin Core occurrence. (Can anyone name an instance of the class "http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/Occurrence"?) The clean-up-a-thon proposal was enthusiastically endorsed within the RDF group, but no one volunteered to organize it. I propose that we self-organize, and find a way to carve out two days at the coming meeting to hash out as much as we can, with a follow-on workshop if necessary. But first, I'd be interested to know - am I the only one who feels this way? Sincerely, Joel. p.s. I've said this before, but it bears repeating - Darwin Core is almost an excellent standard, and almost ideally suited to be the foundation for a semantic web for biodiversity informatics. I have great respect for those who were involved in its creation and continued curation - for their hard work, and clear thinking, and patience for people like me struggling to understand. But all that work, thought, and patience will be for naught, if the gyre is allowed to widen much further. _______________________________________________ tdwg-content mailing list tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-content-- John Deck (541) 321-0689