At the moment I can only add small bits of geo-relevant comments to the dwc effort:
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1. While studying the available terms for describing biodiversity-related images for MRTG, trying to reuse as many dwc terms as possible (unless higher priority standards already exists, such as dc or xmp, see http://www.keytonature.eu/wiki/MRTG_Schema_v0.7#Geography_Vocabulary), we note the conspicuous absence of
** city or place name **
The term is available in iptc geo extension and is likely to be in the future routinely used on digital images. dwc has
http://purl.org/dc/terms/Location Has Domain: Definition: A spatial region or named place.
and
Identifier: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/locality Has Domain: http://purl.org/dc/terms/Location Definition: The specific description of the place. Less specific geographic information can be provided in other geographic terms (higherGeography, continent, country, stateProvince, county, waterBody, island, islandGroup). This term may contain information modified from the the original to correct perceived errors or standardize the description. Comment: Example: "Bariloche, 25 km NNE via Ruta Nacional 40 (=Ruta 237)". For discussion see http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/wiki/Location
However, the first is very wide, and does not give the information that the type of object is a place or city name (it could be circumscription names like a province), the second is free from text.
In many densely populated areas, separating the city or village name for easier finding is recommended, because these terms do occur in gazetteers. Could this be added to DWC?
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2. If clarity is more important than brevity, I would greatly prefer stateOrProvince over the current stateProvince, which literally is the province of a state, which more less exists in Germany as administration province of a state of the federal republic (Regierungsbezirk).
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3. The definition of county (perhaps better more international as "County or Subprovince") is:
Term Name: county Identifier: http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/county Has Domain: http://purl.org/dc/terms/Location Definition: The full, unabbreviated name of the next smaller political region than StateProvince (county, shire, department, etc.) in which the Location occurs. Comment: Examples: "Missoula", "Los Lagos", "Mataró". For discussion see http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/wiki/Location
Here, wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/County) suggests to interpret the German Kreis as equivalent to county; however, the literal definition above would require to map county to Regierungsbezirk.
Many countries have a hierarchy of adminstrative political regions, and the highest may often not be the most relevant ones.
I suggest to weaken the definition to a suggestions, perhaps:
Definition: The full, unabbreviated name of the most relevant political region between cities or villages and states or provinces (county, shire, department, etc.) in which the Location occurs.
Gregor