Re: best practice property to use for naming a skos:ConceptScheme

On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 05:31:00PM -0400, Thomas Baker wrote:
> (Note: s/author/creator/, s/Actor/Agent/)

Sorry!!! Me randomly inventing new stuff in the dc namespaces is the last
thing you needed :)

Someone should write a namespace validator for my emails :)

Cheers,

Alistair

> 
> This question will be at the top of a revamped FAQ, as it keeps
> coming up, and in many contexts.  Two years ago on this very list,
> I wrote [1]:
> 
>     DCMI has gotten alot of positive feedback from the Semantic Web
>     community on the "makeover" of DCMI properties with domains and
>     ranges.  A longer explanation, with historical context:
> 
>     dc:title [1] and dc:subject [2] (and the other thirteen Dublin
>     Core properties) were among the first RDF properties declared
>     anywhere.  They were declared as RDF properties before W3C
>     standardized the notion of "range" in the RDF Schema
>     specification.
> 
>     As RDF matured, the DC properties became criticized in SW
>     circles for being underspecified.  DCMI wanted to assign ranges,
>     but in doing so did not want to "break" existing legacy data,
>     which used "subject" (for example) both with literal and
>     non-literal values.
> 
>     As described in [4, paragraphs starting "Formal domains..."],
>     DCMI resolved this dilemma by creating fifteen properties in the
>     /terms/ namespace in parallel to the corresponding terms in the
>     /elements/1.1/ namespace, and declared the former as
>     subproperties of the latter.
> 
>     It is not actually incorrect to continue using dc:subject and
>     dc:title -- alot of Semantic Web data still does -- and since
>     the range of those properties is unspecified, it is not actually
>     incorrect to use (for example) dc:subject with a _literal_ value
>     or dc:title with a _non-literal_ value.  However, good Semantic
>     Web practice is to use properties consistently in accordance
>     with formal ranges, so implementers are encouraged to use the
>     more precisely defined dcterms: properties.
> 
>     Tom (wearing his DCMI hat)
> 
>     [1] http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/#elements-title
>     [2] http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/#elements-subject
>     [3] http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/#H1
>     [4] http://dublincore.org/documents/dcmi-terms/#terms-subject
>     [5] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-swd-wg/2009Jan/0000.html
> 
> Tom
> 
> [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-esw-thes/2009Jun/0017.html
> 
> -- 
> Tom Baker <tbaker@tbaker.de>

-- 
Alistair Miles
Head of Epidemiological Informatics
Centre for Genomics and Global Health <http://cggh.org>
The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics
Roosevelt Drive
Oxford
OX3 7BN
United Kingdom
Web: http://purl.org/net/aliman
Email: alimanfoo@gmail.com
Tel: +44 (0)1865 287669

Received on Friday, 18 March 2011 12:15:01 UTC