Re: Best Practices doc section 1.3 Vocabulary Selection

Hi Phil,
First, thanks for circulating.  While the short extract is helpful, reading it without the context of the entire document leaves me with a number of questions.  I don't know if this doc you're writing is meant to be informational or hard core guidance for EU publishers.  The except you attached in PDF seems more the later, but let's discuss further as vocabs is on Thursday's GLD WG agenda.

Feedback with the caveat that I don't how you plan to modify this content for the BP section on vocab selection:

* p. 30 - you reference "the Working Groups" - are these W3C working groups, SEMIC working groups, gov't working groups?
* p. 30 - need definition of "Core Vocabularies" - no doubt that is specified in the first 29 pages, but is that a set of Core Vocabularies proposed by ISA or a given gov't authority?
* p. 30 - would you consider adding to the first bulleted list:
a) Who is the authority publishing the vocab? 
b) Does the publishing authority have an institutional commitment to keeping it current and available?

* p. 30 - bulleted list of vocabs, consider adding:
1) The Vocabulary of Interlinked Datasets (VoID) defines key metadata about RDF datasets. It is intended as a bridge between the publishers and users of RDF data, with applications ranging from data discovery to cataloging and archiving of datasets. Authorities MUST publish a VoID description so others can reuse it. 
2) The GeoNames Ontology is a geographical database containing over 10 million geographical names. 
3) The Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities vocabulary (SIOC, pronounced “shock”) is designed for developers to describe information about an online community sites, such as users, posts and forums.  

** The word "must" is something I hope we can discuss on tomorrow's telecon vis a vis informative vs. normative guidance.  See IETF RFC 2991, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt


Re: Vocab Working Note

The longer bulleted list that pass your tests and are relevant to eGov, I suggest putting into a Working Note.  I was thinking about our discussion during the F2F about not recommending specific vocabs but rather providing a checklist of things to review and determine whether they are a good fit for a given gov't authority.  

A good way to handle this may be to put in a GLD Working Note.  In a WN, we can say, "We recommend ... <bulleted list>" giving the 'force of law in the absence of other guidance.'  Readers recognize that these vocabs may change over time but we satisfy the recommendations that some of us feel strongly is necessary but keep the people who feel vocabs change and we shouldn't recommend specific ones beyond a very short list (ie., those called out in the charter).

Thoughts??

Cheers,
Bernadette Hyland

On Feb 8, 2012, at 12:24 PM, Phil Archer wrote:

> Fulfilling my Action-40 [1] in which I was asked to "Reflect on SEMIC advice on vocab selection etc. to see if there is more to contribute to the BP doc" here are some reflections.
> 
> The attached PDF is a (short) extract from a process document I wrote for the creation of core vocabularies under the EU's ISA programme. The doc itself isn't available publicly, at least partly because it needs updating, but there's no prob sharing this bit which is about vocabulary selection.
> 
> It sets out some criteria - actually just 3 - for selection and then gives a list of some that meet them. That list as just a modified version of the one in Tom Heath and Chris Bizer's book.
> 
> HTH
> 
> Phil.
> 
> [1] http://www.w3.org/2011/gld/track/actions/40
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> 
> Phil Archer
> W3C eGovernment
> http://www.w3.org/egov/
> 
> http://philarcher.org
> +44 (0)7887 767755
> @philarcher1
> <Review Existing Vocabs.pdf>