Pete, Because of the way this thread is developing, I feel the need to set the record straight about the history of the chartering the RDF group. When I came into the TDWG "world" several years ago, I was totally clueless. I wanted to find out the answers to a number of questions that I had and after some time, I realized that to some extent people hadn't figured out exactly what the answers were to those questions. In the particular case of RDF, it became clear to me that although there were a number of ideas floating around about how things should work, none of them actually had a "stamp of approval" of TDWG because there was no developed standard in the form of either a technical specification or an applicability statement about how RDF should be used in the biodiversity realm. (The possible exception to this is the "TDWG ontology" which is incomplete and whose "finished" part is focused primarily on the Taxon class. But even that isn't a ratified standard.) It wasn't until Stan's email of Oct 13 last year (http://lists.tdwg.org/pipermail/tdwg-content/2010-October/001653.html) that I had a clear idea of how the process of standards creation and documentation worked within TDWG and what the role of Interest and Task Groups was within that process. After that point, it became clear to me that despite the extensive discussion on the topic of RDF that had taken place on the tdwg-content email list, there probably wasn't ever going to be any motion towards a any official TDWG guidelines on the use of RDF unless somebody got the ball rolling on an Interest or Task Group dealing with the subject. Six months went by after Stan's email clarifying what was necessary to move the process forward and nobody (including you, Pete) made any moves toward organizing a TDWG group focused on RDF. With considerable trepidation, I decided to try to get the ball rolling and make an attempt to recruit people who would be willing to serve as core members of the group. I would like to note for the record that you were one of the first people whom I tried to recruit as a core member (and you declined).
I really don't understand what you mean when you say "It is not clear to me if this new group will be any different from the previous group where some mysterious entity decided ...". What is the "previous" or "old" group? As far as I know there never has been a previous group. If you are talking about the TAG, I've already complained about the lack of clarity about who the TAG is. But I chalk that up to lack of organization and busyness on the part of the participants, not a conspiracy. But there certainly is no mystery about the proposed IG/TG - those who've agreed to serve as core members are listed on the proposed charter. No "mystery people".
You have stated in this email (as well as in some earlier ones) that you designed TaxonConcept so that it could be taken up by some other group (presumably TDWG). That is a laudable goal and you have provided some of the best existing examples of "how things can be done". But I think that you are being unrealistic to expect that your work will somehow be adopted as-is by TDWG, given that TDWG is supposed to be an organization driven by consensus. We have seen over the past couple years what a long and drawn out process it is just to get even a single term added to Darwin Core, let alone getting the community to accept an entire ontology as you are hoping. Add to that the fact that a lot of people are confused about RDF and what it's for (and also the fact that some people doubt its utility), it shouldn't be any surprise that taxonconcept.org hasn't been adopted by TDWG by acclamation.
I also do not understand what you mean when you say "...when I proposed such a group earlier on multiple occasions". I've been following the email list for several years now and I haven't seen any occasion where you or anybody else has proposed chartering an Interest/Task Group on this topic. If you wanted to propose an Interest/Task Group to look at RDF issues, you could have done exactly what Joel and I are doing now: recruit core members and write up a charter. But you didn't do that.
I expect that when it gets off the ground, the RDF IG/TG will take a serious look at the approach taken by TaxonConcept.org along with all of the other relevant vocabularies and ontologies that are out there to represent the diverse parts of the universe that biodiversity informatics interfaces with.
Steve
Peter DeVries wrote:
Hi Joel,
I thought I should let you know that I have been working on a paper with some people from the EoL on this very subject.
In fact the whole goal of the TaxonConcept/GeoSpecies project is setup examples and work these issues out.
It is not clear to me if this new group will be any different from the previous group where some mysterious entity decided what suggestions were to accepted and who would get attribution for that suggestion.
If this new group operates like the old group then it is not in my best interest or many others to participate.
What I would like to avoid are the experiences I had implementing features and making changes which later the person who requested the modification "changes their mind".
If you go back to the reasoning as to why part of TaxonConcept were done in the way that they were you will see it was in part to allow it to be portable and able to be taked up by some other group.
In a sense, an early version of a semantic web version of the Darwin Core already exists in TaxonConcept.
So what is the reasoning behind this new group that is different from the reasoning I used when I proposed such a group earlier on multiple occasions?
Respectfully,
- Pete
On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 2:46 PM, joel sachs <jsachs@csee.umbc.edu mailto:jsachs@csee.umbc.edu> 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. 1. http://www.tdwg.org/standards/status-and-categories/ _______________________________________________ tdwg-tag mailing list tdwg-tag@lists.tdwg.org <mailto:tdwg-tag@lists.tdwg.org> http://lists.tdwg.org/mailman/listinfo/tdwg-tag--
Pete DeVries Department of Entomology University of Wisconsin - Madison 445 Russell Laboratories 1630 Linden Drive Madison, WI 53706 Email: pdevries@wisc.edu mailto:pdevries@wisc.edu TaxonConcept http://www.taxonconcept.org/ & GeoSpecies http://about.geospecies.org/ Knowledge Bases A Semantic Web, Linked Open Data http://linkeddata.org/ Project