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%22?)
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.