Re: Comments on Data on the Web Best Practices: BP-1 & BP-2

Dear Andrea,

Thank you very much for your comments on the DWBP document!  We are
planning to restructure the section of best practices for metadata and your
comments will be very useful. Please see my comments inline.


> 1. BP-1 ("Document data") seems to mix two different requirements:
> (a) publishing data documentation (metadata)
> (b) publishing metadata in human-readable formats
> Is this correct?
> In such a case, shouldn't these be rather addressed by two different
> BPs? The requirement of publishing metadata shouldn't necessarily
> address *how* this is done. This would also be inconsistent with the
> fact that the requirement about publishing metadata in
> machine-readable formats is addressed by a specific BP (BP-2).
>

Yes, it seems that BP1 is not clear. Originally, we had two distinct BP:
Provide metadata and Provide metadata for humas and machines. Then, we
decided to remove the general BP Provide Metadata and to keep one BP for
metadata for humans and another one for BP for machines. We're gonna review
this structure.


>
> 2. BP-2 ("Use machine-readable formats to provide metadata"), section
> "Intended outcome":
> "It should be possible for computer applications, notably search
> tools, to locate and process the metadata easily, which makes it human
> readable metadata, machine readability metadata."
> (a) It is unclear why this "makes it human readable metadata".
> (b) There's probably a typo in "[... ] machine readability metadata" -
> shouldn't this rather be "[...] machine readable metadata"?
>

Yes, this is not correct! We're gonna correct this sentence.


>
> 3. BP-2 makes the point about the use of machine-readable formats for
> data discovery via software agents, including search engines. It
> points also to specific machine-readable metadata serialisations that
> can be embedded in human-readable metadata, and that are currently
> used by search engines to optimise discovery. However, I have two
> questions on this:
> (a) Shouldn't be a requirement for human-readable metadata to *always*
> embed their machine-readable version? This also when machine-readable
> metadata are available separately. I see a couple of use cases for
> this - e.g., optimising discovery via search engines, existing browser
> plug-ins able to read RDFa, etc.
>


BP2 says that "Metadata in machine-readable formats must be published
together with the data". In a way, it means that machine-readable version
must always be available, but there is no relation with the human-readable
version.



> (b) Do you think that the requirement of being "discoverable" by Web
> search tools should be extended to data? BP-12 partially address this,
> but not explicitly. I'm asking since this issue may be relevant to the
> SDW WG - see [2].
>

Again, I think the BP is not clear. The idea is that metadata may be used
to make data discoverable, i.e., it should be easy to discover the data and
not the metadata. In this sense, BP4 (Provide discovery metadata)
complements BP2.

>
> Thanks!
>
> Andrea


Cheers,
Bernadette

>
>



>
> ----
> [1]http://www.w3.org/2015/spatial/wiki/F2f_Barcelona
> [2]
> http://www.w3.org/2015/spatial/wiki/BP_Requirements#Content_need_to_be_crawlable.2C_then_able_to_ask_search_engine_or_other_service
>
> --
> Andrea Perego, Ph.D.
> Scientific / Technical Project Officer
> European Commission DG JRC
> Institute for Environment & Sustainability
> Unit H06 - Digital Earth & Reference Data
> Via E. Fermi, 2749 - TP 262
> 21027 Ispra VA, Italy
>
> https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/
>
> ----
> The views expressed are purely those of the writer and may
> not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official
> position of the European Commission.
>
>


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