I also agree with these ideas. Actually I also wouldn't mind if both standards use the TDWG Ontology namespace. I just think it's strange to see the standards following different approaches with some degree of overlap.
Best Wishes, -- Renato
Hi Wouter and Neil (and others),
I hope both of you are well. I know this may be a busy time (or, better, vacation time), but I hope that you have had a chance to consider recent discussions on tdwg-content about the relationships between DwC, NCD and the TDWG Ontology. In addition to those public discussions, I'm adding a few questions and comments I have had during the progression of the Darwin Core Review. I'm cc'ing those having a clear vested interest in resolution on both sides. I would urge you to look at the relevant tdwg-content commentary as well as my concerns from the messages below so that we can hopefully quickly come to a consensus on joint plan. I say quickly because I am eager that DwC review shouldn't undergo further unnecessary delays.
In case it's a bit much to go through all of the "literature" relevant to the proposal I'm making, and in hopes of facilitating quick solutions, I'll summarize.
- Dublin Core recommends the use of the dcterms rather than their
antiquated dc counterparts. Shouldn't NCD follow suit? Specific example: instead of http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/source, use http://purl.org/dc/terms/source.
- NCD is using terms from the TDWG ontology, which is to date an
unfinished academic exercise without any review. This dependency seems to me to guarantee that NCD will require revision when the ontology is revised. This wouldn't necessarily be required if NCD took the reigns and defined terms that aren't already in another standard (the Ontology does not fit into this category) within its own domain. Specifically, abandon http://rs.tdwg.org/ontology/voc/ in favor of http://rs.tdwg.org/ncd/terms/.
- Reword some of the NCD term definitions so that NCD can be used
more generally for data sets (data collections), and not just for object collections.
With these commitments, DwC could safely move forward reusing NCD terms. Without the last two, DwC will have to redefine terms such as collectionID.