Advice on Referencing External Vocabularies

Hi, Dan–

Thanks for the discussions at TPAC.

(Context: Danbri is the coordinator for Schema.org, one of the 
contributors to Dublin Core, founder of FOAF, and a long-time SemWeb 
expert, experienced in both application development and in standards. I 
asked him over dinner what approach we should use in referencing 
external vocabularies for our terms.)

If you'll recall, I asked you for advice on what vocabulary to 
reference, and relative influence and usage of `dc-term`s vs Schema.org.

I was surprised by your answer… If I understood correctly, you suggested 
not using any one canonical external vocabulary in our spec, but rather 
to offer a set of equivalent vocabulary terms that might be used, 
depending on the project. On the one hand, this makes sense, and is a 
decentralized solution; on the other, it doesn't really reduce the 
complexity, as I'd hoped to do by referencing only a single external 
vocabulary. Could you explain the rationale there, or correct my 
misunderstanding?

Also, I asked about patterns of usage in `dc-term`s and Schema.org. My 
understanding was that Schema.org had already overtaken the usage of 
Dublin Core in the wider Web (though perhaps not in older libraries), 
and that it would be easiest for future developers if we used 
Schema.org; TimBL suggested during our F2F that more projects, and thus 
more tools, natively understood Dublin Core today; ultimately, I guess 
we need to figure out the right balance (or, maybe not, if we follow 
your advice on including multiple references). I think you had a more 
nuanced answer on usage patterns, too. Can you speak to that as well?

All your explanations made sense to me at the time, but not enough for 
me to convey facts and explain it to others in this WG… I appreciate 
your helping us sort out some long-standing (if not particularly 
contentious) issues.

Thanks–
–Doug

Received on Wednesday, 4 November 2015 07:12:09 UTC