Re: Best Practice 4 (Document Metadata) - I agree to suppress it

Hello Carlos,

Thanks for your comments!

When I said that the Document Metadata BP was redundant with the
Document Vocabularies BP, I was considering the BP definition and not
the real intention of the BP.

If we consider the meaning that "BP4 is about documenting what
metadata terms (being reused or ad-hoc) are you finally using", then
Document Metadata is not redundant with Document Vocabularies BP.

In this case, it should be more clear what is the real meaning of
"documenting". If documenting means to "provide a document that
describe the metadata", then I think that BP on human vs. machine
readable metadata covers this requirement. On the other hand, if
documenting metadata concerns to maintain a documentation for
metadata, then maybe we should have a different BP. In this case,
there will be three BP:

1. Document metadata BP: data publishers SHOULD maintain a
documentation of the metadata that describe your data. This BP
concerns something that has to be done by the data consumer, but this
action doesn't have a direct impact on data consumers. There is
another BP (Provide metadata) to say that this documentation should be
provided to data consumers. This BP should be more general than the
Document Vocabularies BP. The metadata documentation should just tell
the vocabularies that are used, instead of providing a complete
documentation for vocabularies.

2. Provide  metadata for both human and machines BP: data publishers
SHOULD document metadata in such a way that both humans and machines
can read. This BP complements the previous one because it says how
metadata should be documented.

3. Provide metadata BP: data publishers SHOULD provide metadata
documentation to data consumers. When you have the documentation, give
it to the data consumers.

Does it make sense for you?

Cheers,
Bernadette


2015-01-20 21:51 GMT-03:00 Laufer <laufer@globo.com>:
> Hi, Carlos,
>
>> BP4 is about documenting what metadata terms are you finally using
>
> Terms are parts of a vocabulary.
>
> And we will have a whole section about vocabularies.
>
> Metadata is documenting data. Then, metadata should be documented. These
> documents about metadata are metadata of metadata. We should take care about
> an infinite chain.
>
> If we talk about documents for machines, we are talking about vocabularies.
> And section 7.
> 4 will take care of this.
>
> If we are talking about humans, metadata is the documentation. Have a
> documentation about metadata is mandatory. If metadata does not have a
> documentation, it does not have a meaning. For example, If one says that the
> dataset has a GNU license, how this can be understood by a human if GNU is
> not documented? The meaning is the documentation and must exist if someone
> decides to refer to it.
>
> In respect to code lists, (maybe this is not the formal definition) I think
> they are a kind of type, or even a kind of vocabulary. Again, I think
> section 7.4 is a better candidate to talk about this.
>
> Best regards,
> Laufer
>
>
>
> Em terça-feira, 20 de janeiro de 2015, Carlos Iglesias
> <contact@carlosiglesias.es> escreveu:
>
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> Here goes my view on this:
>>
>> - I tend to disagree on (former) BP4 being derived from BP1+2+3
>>
>> BP1 is on metadata availability (provide metadata)
>> BP2 is on human vs. machine readable metadata (how to present metadata)
>> BP3 is reusing generic standard metadata terms when possible (i.e. dc,
>> foaf and the like)
>> BP4 is about documenting what metadata terms (being reused or ad-hoc) are
>> you finally using
>>
>> I don't see overlap between any of the above.
>>
>> - WRT BP11 Document vocabularies
>>
>> I don't see any overlap with (fomer) BP4 either as:
>>
>> BP4 is about documenting what metadata terms are you finally using
>> BP11 is about documenting your data (not metadata) models (or
>> "vocabularies") in the case you are developing new ones.
>>
>> - Finally WRT Annette's comments I think there is a missing point here:
>> BPXX Document your data
>>
>> This is about the "data codebooks" that should be accompanying our data as
>> additional documentation but unfortunately are rarely available making
>> working with 3rd party data a pain. This "codebooks" usually document all
>> the information that Annette is refereeing to in her message and more.
>>
>> Best,
>>  CI.
>>
>> On 20 January 2015 at 21:00, Annette Greiner <amgreiner@lbl.gov> wrote:
>>>
>>> Here are a few things that come to mind as needing to be documented in
>>> metadata.
>>> Units, for any measure that is not unitless.
>>> For responses to a survey question, the question itself and how it was
>>> coded. (This is where code lists come in.)
>>> Meaning of nulls, zeroes, NA, etc.
>>> language, locale (we have this one covered elsewhere, but probably it
>>> should be included under the more general BP.)
>>>
>>> I think the metadata information right now is a little bit redundant.
>>> Documenting metadata is really the same as providing metadata. When we have
>>> generalized the BP about documenting, it will be even more like the one
>>> about providing metadata. In both cases, we are talking about using good
>>> metadata to describe the data and making it available to data consumers.
>>> -Annette
>>> --
>>> Annette Greiner
>>> NERSC Data and Analytics Services
>>> Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
>>> 510-495-2935
>>>
>>> On Jan 20, 2015, at 5:16 AM, Bernadette Farias Lóscio <bfl@cin.ufpe.br>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> >
>>> > The Document metadata BP should be rewritten to become more general,
>>> > i.e., not just vocabularies should be documented. In this case, what
>>> > else should be documented when talking about metadata?
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> ---
>>
>> Carlos Iglesias.
>> Internet & Web Consultant.
>> +34 687 917 759
>> contact@carlosiglesias.es
>> @carlosiglesias
>> http://es.linkedin.com/in/carlosiglesiasmoro/en
>
>
>
> --
> .  .  .  .. .  .
> .        .   . ..
> .     ..       .



-- 
Bernadette Farias Lóscio
Centro de Informática
Universidade Federal de Pernambuco - UFPE, Brazil
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Received on Wednesday, 21 January 2015 18:17:02 UTC