[tdwg-content] Darwin Core Proposal - term content recommendations to comments

[John Wieczorek]

Dear all,

I would like to summarize my understanding of the state of the proposal to
put term content recommendations in comments consistently, rather than in
the definitions where they can sometimes be found. There has been universal
support for this idea.

A second part of the proposal was to take this opportunity to separate the
examples from the comments using a distinct property to do so in the rdf
definitions of the terms. There has also been universal support for this
idea.

Discussion revolved around how to accomplish the second part of the
proposal. I originally proposed a new attribute "dwcattributes:example",
which would be included once for every distinct example of term usage -
with potentially many per Darwin Core term. There was universal support for
the idea of enabling this capability, though there was mixed opinion about
using an existing term instead of minting a new one in the dwcattributes
namespace. Specifically, "skos:example" and "iao:example of usage" were
discussed. Potential problems with "skos:example" were pointed out. Similar
concerns about "iao:example of usage" were addressed, leaving this option
still open for consideration.

It is not entirely clear technically (to me, anyway) how the annotation
property "iao:example of usage" would be imported into the normative rdf
document. I'm unaware of an OWL to RDF import mechanism. That doesn't mean
much, because I am not an expert. If there is not, I suppose we would have
to define an rdf file ourselves for the iao term and import that into
dwcattributes or into the normative Darwin Core rdf file(s) directly. I
don't think this would be a rigorous solution, but it would demonstrate our
intent fairly well, especially if there were comments to that effect in the
rdf files. Some guidance here might help us make a final decision on this
topic.

If there is no clear and rigorous solution to the rdf import problem from
IAO, then it may just be easier to coin "dwcattributes:example" as
originally proposed, at least for now, and worry about it's equivalence to
"iao:example of usage" on the ontology side (BCO).

I would really like to get the broader issue resolved soon, as we do
already have consensus on making the contents of the definitions and
comments consistent. If we can't resolve how to separate the examples (even
though we agree that it is a good idea), I will propose that we forget that
added part of the proposal and just deal with the consistency issue first.

Comments encouraged, as always.

Cheers,

John

On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 10:01 AM, Ramona Walls <rlwalls2008 at gmail.com> wrote:

> As far as I know, iao:example of usage also allows both literals and URLs
> as the range. However, I fail to see a serious problem with that, and to
> me, the benefits of re-using existing properties far outway the benefits I
> could see from having a separate set of properties for literals. Also, I
> don't know anyone who reasons over annotations properties, although I am
> sure there are those who do.
>
> In response to Paul Morris's comment, simply using iao:example of usage
> does not import all of IAO, and therefore does not include any of the
> "baggage" of using IAO.
>
> Ramona
>
> ------------------------------------------------------
> Ramona L. Walls, Ph.D.
> Scientific Analyst, The iPlant Collaborative, University of Arizona
> Research Associate, Bio5 Institute, University of Arizona
> Laboratory Research Associate, New York Botanical Garden
>
> On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 10:48 AM, Richard Pyle <deepreef at bishopmuseum.org>
> wrote:
>
>> Like others, I like the idea in principle, but I’m not well-versed in the
>> implications of alternate approaches to implementation to weigh in on that.
>> Whatever technical solution is adopted, I would like to hope that it
>> supports the representation of more than a single example; as sometimes it
>> is useful  to show alternate forms of acceptable content.
>>
>>
>>
>> Aloha,
>>
>> Rich
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* tdwg-content-bounces at lists.tdwg.org [mailto:
>> tdwg-content-bounces at lists.tdwg.org] *On Behalf Of *John Wieczorek
>> *Sent:* Thursday, February 05, 2015 7:22 AM
>> *To:* Paul J. Morris
>> *Cc:* TDWG Content Mailing List; Ramona Walls
>> *Subject:* Re: [tdwg-content] Darwin Core Proposal - term content
>> recommendations to comments
>>
>>
>>
>> Does anyone have similar concerns about iao:example?
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 5, 2015 at 2:09 PM, Paul J. Morris <mole at morris.net> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, 5 Feb 2015 11:17:58 -0500
>> Bob Morris <morris.bob at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > But  skos:note and its subproperties (including skos:example) can take
>> > literals or references [1].  To me, that weighs   more than the
>> > baggage of minting two new terms.
>>
>> Also, SKOS, unless care is taken to import the Owl-DL version, brings
>> you into Owl-Full, with undesirable consequences for those who wish to
>> do reasoning.  In early versions of dwcFP, we did include SKOS terms,
>> but removed them because of the consequences for reasoning.
>>
>> SKOS has some nice terms, reuse is a nice idea, but it comes with
>> significant knowledge engineering consequences.
>>
>> -Paul
>> --
>> Paul J. Morris
>> Biodiversity Informatics Manager
>> Harvard University Herbaria/Museum of Comparative Zoölogy
>> mole at morris.net  AA3SD  PGP public key available
>>
>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
>>
>
>
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