Re: dcterms:creator in RDFa Core 1.1, WD of October 26

As far as I recall (Manu?) we were asked explicitly by the dublin core 
people to use dcterms.  I would be very reluctant to go against their 
wishes... it's their taxonomy after all.

On 11/10/2010 6:50 PM, Thomas Baker wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 10:11:22PM +0000, Toby Inkster wrote:
>>> Some of the examples in [1] generate triples such as:
>>>
>>>      <>  foaf:primaryTopic<#bbq>  .
>>>      <>  dcterms:creator "Jo" .
>>>
>>> However, http://purl.org/dc/terms/creator has a range of
>>> dcterms:Agent. Using dc:creator would not be incorrect because
>>> http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/creator has no specified range
>>> (or rather, by default, rdfs:Resource).
>> This seems to me to be a conflict between:
>>
>> 1. the desire to use the latest and greatest version of Dublin Core; and
>> 2. the desire to use a literal object so that the example includes both
>> a literal and a URI.
>>
>> Perhaps something like dcterms:modified could be used in the example
>> instead of dcterms:creator, as that has a literal object?
> If an example using literal object is needed at that point in
> the spec, that would of course work.  However, that does not
> address the question of best practice regarding the fifteen
> core properties in their /terms/ and /elements/1.1/ variants.
>
> DCMI assigned ranges in order to conform to emerging notions of
> best practice.  However, it did not "deprecate" the rangeless
> properties because they had at that point already been used
> very extensively in Semantic Web data -- with both literal
> and non-literal objects.  By coining "parallel" properties,
> DCMI offered data providers a choice.
>
> DCMI has been "gently promoting" the /terms/ variants for being
> "more precise" and for helping data consumers by making the
> data more consistent.  However, I have been getting feedback
> that "rangeless" properties are actually useful, which
> Jeni Tennison's point seems to reinforce.
>
> Specifically with regard to Dublin Core properties, it is clear
> that the distinction between dc:creator and dcterms:creator is
> not widely understood.  If the dcterms: variants are promoted
> (e.g., in the RDFa specs), what is the risk that they will
> be used incorrectly?  If the risk is high, should we not then
> promote the dc: properties?
>
> More generally, what is the message for vocabulary developers
> today?  Are there uses for which the right design decision is
> to err on the side of underspecification?  This is a general
> question of best practice for Semantic Web, but Jeni is raising
> it specifically for the case of RDFa.  If not on this list,
> where might we have this more general discussion?
>
> Tom
>

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Shane P. McCarron                          Phone: +1 763 786-8160 x120
Managing Director                            Fax: +1 763 786-8180
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Received on Thursday, 11 November 2010 01:08:00 UTC