FW: [PORT] SKOS maintenance policy - 1/2 ("minor errata")

-----Original Message-----
From: public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org
[mailto:public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Thomas Baker
Sent: 30 March 2005 17:05
To: SW Best Practices
Subject: [PORT] SKOS maintenance policy - 1/2 ("minor errata")



I was tasked with reviewing the maintenance policy of the
SKOS Core Vocabulary Specification, W3C Editor's Working
Draft of 2005-03-24 [1].

The review encompasses three sections: Status of this Document,
Introduction, and Policy Statements.  These are appended below
as clear text, in their entirety, interspersed with comments.

This posting is the first part of a two-part review.  It is
limited to pointing out a few editorial errata. Substantive
issues will be discussed in the second posting.

Tom

[1] http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core/spec/2005-03-24

-----

Minor errata:

| Status of this Document
| 
| This section describes the status of this document at the
| time of its publication. Other documents may supersede
| this document. A list of current W3C publications and the
| latest revision of this technical report can be found in
| the W3C technical reports index <http://www.w3.org/TR/>
| at http://www.w3.org/TR/.
| 
| This document is published by the Semantic
| Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group
| <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/>, part of the W3C
| Semantic Web Activity <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/>.
| 
| This document is a W3C Editor's Working Draft and is expected
| to change.  The Working Group intends this document to
| result in a W3C Working Group Note. The group has discussed
| the potential for SKOS to evolve into possible future
| recommendation track work items, and would value feedback on
| the level of formal standardization that is appropriate for
| SKOS-like technology. While the Working Group expectation is
| that SKOS will become a W3C Working Group Note, previous W3C
| Groups have reorganised their deliverables based on deployment
| experience and feedback from the W3C Membership.
| 
| This document is an Editor's Working Draft. We encourage
| public comments. Please send comments to public-swbp-wg@w3.org
| <mailto:public-swbp-wg@w3.org?subject=SKOS-Comment> [archive
| <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swbp-wg/>] and
| start the subject line of the message with "comment:"

Missing full stop at end of sentence.

| Publication as a Working Draft does not imply endorsement
| by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be
| updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any
| time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than
| work in progress.
..

| Introduction
| 
| SKOS stands for Simple Knowledge Organisation System. The name
| SKOS was chosen to emphasise the goal of providing a simple
| yet powerful framework for expressing knowledge organisation
| systems in a machine-understandable way.
| 
| SKOS Core provides a model for expressing the basic structure
| and content of concept schemes (thesauri, classification
| schemes, subject heading lists, taxonomies, terminologies,
| glossaries and other types of controlled vocabulary).
| 
| The SKOS Core Vocabulary is an application of the Resource
| Description Framework (RDF). RDF provides a simple data
| formalism for talking about things, their properties,
| inter-relationships, and categories (classes).  Using RDF
| allows data to be linked to and/or merged with other
| RDF data by semantic web applications. See RDF Concepts

"Semantic Web" - in uppercase?  (Does the BPD WG have a
position on this?)

| <http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-concepts/> for an overview
| of RDF, RDF Semantics <http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-mt/>
| for its formal mathematical basis, and RDF Syntax
| <http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-syntax-grammar/> for details of
| the RDF/XML document format used to exchange RDF data.
| 
| The SKOS Core Vocabulary is itself formally
| defined using RDF and OWL [OWL]. The resource
| http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core.rdf contains the definitive
| SKOS Core Vocabulary RDF/OWL description.
| 
| This specification is intended to provide the authoritative
| human-readable account of the SKOS Core Vocabulary, and
| to reflect the state of the of SKOS Core Vocabulary at the
| time of publication. The content of the term summary tables
| in this specification is generated [SRC] from the SKOS Core

What is "[SRC]" -- a reference, to be added, to an XSLT script?

| Vocabulary RDF/OWL description on the date of publication of
| this document.
| 
| Because the SKOS Core Vocabulary may change (see Change
| Policy Statement below), there may be inconsistencies
| between this document and the SKOS Core Vocabulary RDF/OWL
| description. The latest version of the SKOS Core Vocabulary
| Specification <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core/spec/>
| should accurately reflect the current state of the SKOS Core
| Vocabulary RDF/OWL description, although there still may on
| occasion be short periods (eg. during Web site publication)
| during which there are minor inconsistencies.
| 
| Although the SKOS Core Vocabulary RDF/OWL description is not
| itself a W3C Technical Report, it is (at least for the lifetime
| of the Semantic Web Best Practices WG) being managed with the
| intent of being consistent with this document, as well as with
| other supporting materials published as W3C Technical Reports.
..

| Policy Statements
| 
| N.B. The Policy Statements described in this specification are
| a best effort representation of the Working Group's initial

"best-effort" - with hyphen (because used as an adjective phrase).

| thinking and intent, and are subject to the caveats described
| in the Status of this Document section. It is intended that
| this warning be removed after further discussion in subsequent
| iterations of this working draft. Also note that control of
| the SKOS Core namespace will revert to W3C control once this
| WG's charter expires.
| 
| Naming
| 
| The URI for the SKOS Core Vocabulary itself is:
| 
|     http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core
| 
| The URI for a class or property in the SKOS Core Vocabulary is
| constructed by appending the local name for that property or class to
| the URI http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#. E.g.
| 
|     http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#Concept
|     http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#prefSymbol
| 
| The local name of a class always starts with an uppercase
| character.  Where the local name is comprised of multiple
| concatenated words, the leading character of each word will
| be an uppercase character. E.g.
| 
|     Concept
|     ConceptScheme
| 
| The local name of a property starts with a lowercase
| character. Where the local name is comprised of multiple
| concatenated words, the leading character of the second and
| each subsequent word will be an uppercase character. E.g.
| 
|     subject
|     prefLabel
|     isPrimarySubjectOf
| 
| Persistence
| 
| This document, the SKOS Core Guide, the RDF description of
| the SKOS Core Vocabulary, and the classes and properties of
| the SKOS Core Vocabulary are all declared to be persistent
| resources, as defined by the persistence policy at
| http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Persistence.
| 
| Change
| 
| Changes to SKOS Core classes and properties may
| occur. All changes are reported on the SKOS Change Log
| <http://esw.w3.org/mt/esw/archives/cat_skos_changelog.html>.
| 
| Each class or property is assigned a term status value,
| which indicates the stability of the resource, and the types
| of modification that are allowed [DCMI Namespace]. A class
| or property may take one of three term status values:
| 
| unstable
| 
|     The term is unstable, and feedback is welcomed on it's

"its"

|     current form and utility (analogous to 'alpha' release
|     in software development).  It may currently be poorly
|     defined. its meaning and/or form may be expected to change

"Its"

|     at any time. Do not implement mission critical systems

"mission-critical"

|     that depend on this term persisting in its current form.
|     (Changes corresponding to DCMI class A, B or C may occur).
| 
| testing
| 
|     The term has gone beyond the raw proposal stage, and is
|     undergoing testing (analogous to 'beta' release in software
|     development). This term may still change in response to
|     feedback from testing, although it may be expected not to
|     undergo any radical change. The cost to early implementors
|     of changing the term will be considered, however the
|     goal of achieving wider interoperability and long-term
|     stability may override those considerations. (Changes
|     corresponding to DCMI class A or B may occur)

Missing full stop.

| 
| stable
| 
|     No substantial (meaning changing) alterations will take

"(i.e., meaning-changing)" is clearer.  (Otherwise, one might 
understand it to mean "(meaning 'changing')").

|     place.  Implementors can expect the term to persist in
|     its current form indefinitely. (Changes corresponding to
|     DCMI class A may occur)

Missing full stop.

| New classes or properties may be added to the SKOS Core
| Vocabulary at any time (changes corresponding to DCMI class D).
| 
| A class or property at any of the above status levels may be
| marked as deprecated, in which case instructions will be given
| on what to use in its place. A deprecated class property may
| be expected to remain unchanged indefinitely.
| 
| Maintenance
| 
| The SKOS Core Vocabulary is hosted and maintained by W3C. At
| the time of writing, W3C has delegated management of the SKOS
| Core namespace to the the Semantic Web Best Practices WG, whose

Delete extra "the".

| chairs have in turn have delegated these responsibilities to
| the editors of this specification (Alistair Miles and Dan
| Brickley). The Working Group is committed to establishing
| clear expectations around the management of RDF vocabularies,
| through documentation of process and maintenance policies.
| This is itself an evolving process. Specifically, this document
| is itself situated within the W3C Process, and may change and
| evolve in the light of feedback on SKOS Core and on the SKOS
| Core policy statements.  It should be noted that claims made
| by the Working Group using the (experimental) persistence
| and change terminology employed here have as their scope
| the currently chartered Working Group. They have only draft
| status within the wider W3C Process. W3C has not delegated
| to the WG any authority to make binding commitments on behalf
| of W3C beyond those implicit in the formal W3C Process.
| 
| The Working Group is committed to a public, consensus-driven
| design environment for SKOS Core, and to this end conducts
| SKOS-related discussion in public, in particular drawing on
| feedback from the Semantic Web Interest Group mailing list
| public-esw-thes@w3.org.


-- 
Dr. Thomas Baker                        Thomas.Baker@izb.fraunhofer.de
Institutszentrum Schloss Birlinghoven         mobile +49-160-9664-2129
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft                          work +49-30-8109-9027
53754 Sankt Augustin, Germany                    fax +49-2241-144-2352
Personal email: thbaker79@alumni.amherst.edu

Received on Thursday, 31 March 2005 11:46:48 UTC