Re: dwbp-ACTION-123: Call for comments

Hi, Phil,

Thank you for the comments and the text edition in your version.

I have done another version (before your comments), suppressing things that
other members of the group suggested.

I do not know how the final text is approved.

Laufer

2014-12-11 13:13 GMT-02:00 Phil Archer <phila@w3.org>:

> Hi everyone, some comments inline below.
>
> On 09/12/2014 18:38, Annette Greiner wrote:
>
>> Thanks for writing up a nice introduction to metadata. I really like that
>> you addressed the issues of different granularity and different types. We
>> may not even need to include the term as something readers need to be
>> familiar with in advance.
>>
>
> +1
>
>
>  In general, I like the idea of defining terms where they are first used
> in the text. I tend to think we should consider both technical people and
> their managers when determining what level of technicality to write to, so
> that someone charged with publishing data on the web can easily point a
> senior decision-maker to specific best practices in order to get buy-in.
>
> +1
>
>
>> Because we are really targeting publishers of data, I think the first few
>> sentences are unnecessary.
>>
>
> -1
>
> I don't agree that we're only targeting publishers. The charter includes
> this:
>
> "Developers would like easy access to data that is 100% accurate,
> regularly updated and guaranteed to be available at all times. Data
> publishers are likely to take a different view. There are disparities
> between different developers too: for many, data means CSV files and APIs,
> for others it means linked data and the two sides are often disparaging of
> each other."
>
> So it talks about developers as much as publishers.
>
> The data usage vocab is a clear example where users are in scope.
>
> It's also often the case that data publishers are also data users and,
> actually, I rather like the term data broker (a much nicer word than the
> horrible mangling of the English language that the European Commission
> uses: 'Infomediary' - gah!). Data brokers seem particularly relevant if
> we're talking about data enrichment etc.
>
> So personally, I like a lot of what Laufer has captured, modulo trivial
> editorial nit picks.
>
> Oh heck, the only way I can explain what I mean is to edit it...
>
> [An hour passes]
>
> Right. I've edited the metadata section in my current fork of the doc at
> http://philarcher1.github.io/dwbp-1/bp.html#metadata
>
> My edited version of Laufer's text presents two primary classes of
> stakeholder - publisher and consumer - but then goes on to say that there
> are many other roles including data brokers.
>
> Incidentally, I had to look up the word 'subjacent.' I kicked off a short
> Twitter discussion and, after that, changed it to 'underlying.'
> https://twitter.com/philarcher1/status/543014767884259328
>
> > You could start with the sentence, “Metadata is data about data.” That
> nicely clues the reader to the fact that this is an introduction that will
> explain what metadata is.
>
>>
>> I don’t understand why there is a paragraph about distribution formats
>> included here. Not only is it out of scope, it seems largely off topic.
>>
>
> Yes and no. I don't think we can be completely silent about different data
> formats. What we can do, as I've tried to do in my edits, is to say that
> the intentions are normative (an instance of an RFC 2119 keyword is coming
> up shortly). But the implementation is a suggestion. More in a sec.
>
>
>> I think we should have here some explicit best practices that are about
>> metadata more generally than specific fields, like “metadata should be
>> available in human readable and machine-readable forms”.
>>
>
> +1
>
> Actually, the fact that you have to provide metadata at all is a BP as far
> as I'm concerned. So I write it out. That gave me a chance to write an
> actual best practice which is not as easy as one might imagine, even for
> one as basic as "provide metadata."
>
> I used RFC 2119 in the Intended Outcome section. My proposal is that each
> BP has such a keyword (MUST, SHOULD, MAY).
>
> Two more of Laufer's paragraphs could also be turned into BPs:
>
> 1. Human and Machine Readable
> 2. Standard vocabularies
> 3. A BP on descriptive metadata - in more detail than in the BP already
> provided.
> 4. A BP on structural metadata - ditto.
> 5. Domain-specific (I'm sure Annette and Eric S can come up with
> examples), mine might be GTFS for transport data.
>
>  That is a best practice in itself, so I think it should get more than
> just a mention in the introduction.
>
>>
>> The organization of the numbered sections is confusing to me. The last
>> sentence of the intro suggests that the data licenses and other sections
>> below are subsections of metadata, but the numbers indicate otherwise, and
>> it’s not at all clear where the metadata section is meant to end. There is
>> also an allusion to an introduction for a “data organization” subsection
>> that seems to be between the metadata level and the examples of metadata.
>>
>> In a larger issue, probably not something we can address in the current
>> draft, I’m not sure that the data lifecycle-based document structure is
>> very helpful in terms of finding a specific best practice. I’m finding it
>> difficult to guess where things are. In a way, everything should fit under
>> the rubric of best practices for data publication.
>>
>
> Bernadette has answered these last two points.
>
> HTH
>
> Phil.
> (goes off to write to GitHub guru Yaso to work out how to heck to force a
> merge...)
>
> Phil.
>
>
>
>
>> --
>> Annette Greiner
>> NERSC Data and Analytics Services
>> Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
>> 510-495-2935
>>
>> On Dec 5, 2014, at 9:38 AM, Laufer <laufer@globo.com> wrote:
>>
>>  Hello all,
>>>
>>> I wrote a description for the beginning of the metadata section and I
>>> want to ask the group to comment:
>>>
>>> http://w3c.github.io/dwbp/bp.html#metadata
>>>
>>> Thank you.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Laufer
>>>
>>> --
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>>>
>>
>>
>>
> --
>
>
> Phil Archer
> W3C Data Activity Lead
> http://www.w3.org/2013/data/
>
> http://philarcher.org
> +44 (0)7887 767755
> @philarcher1
>



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