Hi Steve -
Bob suggested too that I changed the charter into an Interest Group charter. So I'm sorry if rather than moving anything forward I created mostly confusion.
Having said that, the changes I made are a reflection of the context and scope of charge in which I think this group, whether it is now an IG or TG, should be operating, i.e., that I feel would make the most sense. I feel pretty strongly that producing and practically validating RDF/OWL data publishing and consumption practices will consist of more than one task, and the idea that this is a task we can do once and for all is rather concerning to me. In fact, IMHO it isn't even worth attempting - the technology landscape in this area is evolving so rapidly, anything we produce now is virtually guaranteed to be obsolete in one year if no group feels committed to maintain it.
I'll also admit that I'm actually surprised to find that the TAG is an IG similar to all others. I would think the TAG ought to be a cross- cutting group that integrates the output from all IGs, and has no TGs of its own other than those devoted to accomplishing this cross-IG integration.
Finally, if TGs are devoted to accomplishing one task and then they dissolve, I don't understand why anyone should be bothered with creating, and then approving a charter to start with - shouldn't they rather have an agenda (or possibly a proposal preceding that)? Either there are people willing to do the task or there are not - I don't see the point of the chartering/approval process here.
So, apparently the TDWG process just confuses the hell out of me. And apparently it's really only an IG that would be in line with what I think is the most useful way to do this. Can we still change to IG?
-hilmar
On Sep 23, 2011, at 5:03 PM, Steve Baskauf wrote:
Hilmar, I've been in class all afternoon so I haven't had time to look carefully at your edits yet. But I wanted to make one comment about what you said in your second paragraph. It is part of the nature of a task group that it have a limited lifespan: the amount of time that it takes to complete the task which it has been assigned. After that, the job of maintaining the standard which the task group creates reverts to the interest group which chartered it (I am paraphrasing here from my understanding of http://www.tdwg.org/about-tdwg/process/) . So if the RDF group is actually a Task Group chartered by the TAG, then after its task is completed, it will fall to the TAG to maintain the product that it creates.
The concerns that you raise below include some of the reasons why we had initially suggested that the group be an Interest Group rather than a Task Group. An interest group does not have a defined lifespan - it exists as long as the interest exists. Unlike a Task Group, it does not have to produce a defined product which http://www.tdwg.org/about-tdwg/process/ implies (but does not explicitly state) would be a standard of one of the flavors described in http://www.tdwg.org/standards/status-and-categories/ (Technical Specification, Applicability Statement, Best Current Practice, or Data Standard).
The reason why we are currently proposing that the group be a Task Group is primarily because several members of the TAG felt that was the most appropriate thing. I think that I agree with them. However, I am still uneasy about several aspects of chartering the group as a Task Group, namely:
- I don't really understand exactly who the TAG is (i.e.
specifically, who are the particular people to whom the RDF TG would be accountable?). 2. What precisely is the task whose completion will signal the end of the life of the Task Group? We have put some benchmarks in the charter, but none of them include the creation of a standard of any of the forms I listed above. Is that OK for a Task Group? I don't know.
I certainly don't want to put a damper on the forward progress of the group by asking these questions, because I'm excited about the prospect of getting the group off the ground and because the TDWG meeting is only weeks away. But at the moment we are engaging in a discussion within the chartering group and I think it would be appropriate for some of the TAG members to weigh in on these concerns. If it turns out that there isn't really any answer to the question "who exactly is the TAG?" and "what is our task?" then maybe chartering an Interest Group would be more appropriate than a Task Group.
Steve
Hilmar Lapp wrote:
Joel -
I've made a number of edits. These are in part to put the motivation into a larger beyond-TDWG context, and in part to make it a little more future-proof. The charter in places read (to me) more like a workshop agenda than a charter, thus preempting decisions that the TG participants might (want to) make to a degree that I wasn't fully comfortable with. I've tried to make it take a step back.
I also removed the sentence about handing off to the TAG after one year - while that may be what the participants indeed decide to do after one year, it's not what I'd want ingrained in the charter, and also a one-off mindset isn't necessarily what I'd like to start with. More to the point, if the TG (or whatever its successor(s)) doesn't maintain those documents, I'm afraid nobody will, and there is plenty of empirical evidence around the TDWG site to support that.
-hilmar
On Sep 19, 2011, at 3:46 PM, joel sachs wrote:
Greetings everyone,
After some back and forth amongst Steve Baskauf, myself, Greg Whitbread, and the executive, we've decided to move forward with an RDF/OWL task group, convened under the TAG. Our task will be to deliver a document comprising i. use cases and competency questions; ii. well documented examples of addressing those use cases via rdf and sparql; and iii. discussion of advantages and disadvantages of the approaches illustrated by the examples.
Our draft charter is at http://code.google.com/p/tdwg-rdf/wiki/CharterOfTG and we welcome comments, suggestions, and better ideas. One area where we're still open is the question of whether or not our deliverable should be an official Best Current Practice document [1]. The charter reflects our current feeling that it should not. After we deliver our "book of use cases and examples", options would include being re-chartered by the TAG to produce a best practices document, spinning off as a "Semantic Web Interest Group", or disbanding (either in triumph or despair).
When we were planning to convene as an Interest Group, several of you accepted our invitation to serve as core members, and we hope that convening as a Task Group does not change your willingness to do so. If you would like to be a core member of the group, and we haven't yet contacted you, there's a good chance that we will. But don't wait! Feel free to volunteer for core membership. (And recall that you don't have to be a "core member to" contribute.)
In regards timeline, I'd like to incorporate any feedback we receive, and submit the charter to the executive at the end of this week, in hopes of being chartered by New Orleans.
Many thanks! Joel.
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