Re: New issue?: vocabulary maintenance [vocabset-5]

Rick and all.

On 2008 Feb 11, at 09:47, Frederic V. Hessman wrote:

[...about SKOSifying UCDs]

>>> With UCD, there is a normative document of sorts and SKOS alone
>>> cannot express the additional info embodied in the "syntax codes",
>>> making it impossible to suggest a quick format change (although
>>> this problem could, of course, be solved).

As a technical point, there's nothing stopping anyone adding extra RDF properties to a SKOS vocabulary, so that

<#poseqra> a skos:Concept;

     skos:prefLabel "RA";
     ucd:syntaxCode "Q".

is perfectly legitimate.

>>> This said, there is still a very good reason to produce a version
>>> of UCD in SKOS exactly so we can pretend it's a normal vocabulary.

This is still sounding like a `because it's there' argument, and it would be nice if we could have a concrete use-case (or user-story) in the document, if only to illustrate the range of potential vocabulary applications. However I'm not going to press the point (see below).

>>> Every time the UCD list is updated, we insure that the SKOS
>>> version is too, and everybody is happy.

But this is problematic. Who's the `we' who's going to ensure that the SKOS version keeps pace with UCD word-list changes? Who, if anyone, is going to look after these vocabularies? (but see below).

>> Are you, then, moving towards the position that the IVOA-T
>> shouldn't be included in this vocabularies standard, but should be
>> the subject of a parallel standardisation effort?
>
> This is what we decided ages ago, in fact during the process of
> moving from Andrea, myself, et al.'s original still-born VOcabulary
> proposal to the present SKOS proposal.

We agreed this? Some agreement on -- hell, some discussion of -- this issue is precisely what I've been trying to create this last couple of weeks.

> I'd be happy with a plan to clean up the rest of IVOA-T and submit
> it quickly as an updated version of IAU-93, with many of the
> problems of the old thesaurus, but with many things also cleaned up
> and improved. I haven't gotten the feeling from all that this is
> perceived as something we should do......

How about the following as a resolution of issues [maintenance-4] and [vocabset-5]?

• We include, as part of the vocabularies standard, all six vocabularies listed at <http://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/users/norman/ivoa/vocabularies/issues#vocabset-5 >. Four out of the six of those have `patrons' listed next to them at <http://www.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/VocabulariesWorkingArea>. These people will work off-list to get the vocabularies in a state where they feel they can be made public, and at some point in the next few weeks, they'll be bundled with the document text as a WD. This will resolve issue [vocabset-5].
• Those six vocabularies will be public, and citable as part of this standard, but the semantics group will not commit to maintaining them further; specifically, there will be no maintenance process set up as part of this standard. We can add text to the Good Practices section <http://www.astro.gla.ac.uk/users/norman/ivoa/vocabularies/vocabularies-58.xhtml#practices > about curation standards, but make no requirements. This will resolve issue [maintenance-4] with the third possible resolution on that page.
• Thinking specifically of the IVOA-T, Rick will lead a process which will develop that IVOA-T, with the expectation that it'll produce some citable document before this Vocabularies document is finished, but not be fully finished then. In the message I'm responding to, he called for volunteers to take part in that process -- I'm sure he'll have plenty of participation. Despite that process continuing after the Vocabularies document is completed, I suggest that we include a snapshot of that vocabulary (call it a snapshot, a beta, or an early release) as part of the Vocabualries document, in _whatever_ state it's at at PR time.
• The UCD maintenance group might consider adopting, and subsequently maintaining, the UCD vocabulary.

Please propose adjustments to these proposals as required. If no-one vetos these proposals by, say, the weekend, I'll mark the two issues as provisionally closed.

At that point, the only open issue will be the [versioning-3] issue, and I think that'll just require a bit of reading on my part to work out if there's a DC trick we're missing.

How does that sound?

Norman

-- 
Norman Gray  :  http://nxg.me.uk
eurovotech.org  :  University of Leicester