RE: ISSUE-139, ISSUE-146, Methodology ? Was: alignment sosa to ssn

Indeed.


1.      I’ve just added an additional rdfs:comment in ssn-sosa.ttl to make this all crystal clear. I’ve issued a pull-request for only this comment, and assigned it to Kerry.



2.      I agree that the process for merging and accepting pull-requests has been unclear at times. It was even less clear back on 4th July 2016 when I created the directory ssn/rdf and initially populated it with several files related to the work that some of us had started on the modularization experiment. My thinking was that the sooner we were looking at RDF artefacts the better, as it would allow us to evaluate the plausibility of the proposed modularization approach. But that’s also why I carefully partitioned off this work into a separate directory. If you look at the commit comments you’ll see they are a bit terse, but this was an honest experiment. https://github.com/w3c/sdw/commit/40e7bf6223c184988ae2c3ccf81c2618fb118ab2

I also made some Wiki pages at the time, but it never got much attention - https://www.w3.org/2015/spatial/wiki/SOSA_Ontology (and is now stale).

I found the use of the various collaboration tools and overall workflow quite confusing. The group has been quite fractured on this. For some issues the Wiki has been used, but not consistently. The mailing list has seen a mixture of heat and light, with the usual mixed thread problems. I even tried using a branching GitHub to post proposals relating to the spec document, so they could be seen in context, but this did not trigger much scrutiny.

The W3C Issue tracker is OK to a point, but we have many more open than closed issues, and it is very unclear what the granularity should be. The granularity of decision making is one of the main process problems we have faced. I would have expected that some medium sized tasks could have been delegated to people or sub-groups, who could then bring an integrated proposal to the group, and while this has happened organically to a certain extent, there are clearly some legitimacy questions.


3.      Finally regarding artefacts in GitHub - AFAIK nothing in GitHub has any formal status unless or until it is mentioned in a normative part of the spec document. I would insist on that, and somewhat concerned there is any question.

Simon

From: Maxime Lefrançois [mailto:maxime.lefrancois@emse.fr]
Sent: Saturday, 11 February, 2017 22:19
To: Kerry Taylor <kerry.taylor@anu.edu.au>; public-sdw-wg@w3.org
Subject: ISSUE-139, ISSUE-146, Methodology ? Was: alignment sosa to ssn

Dear Kerry, Simon, all,

I think that Simon is keeping ssn-sosa.ttl in line with the latest discussions in this mailing list, see the comments in the related pull request that has been merged two days ago: https://github.com/w3c/sdw/pull/543


I also understand Kerry's point, in that the pull requests and their merging is not always discussed in this mailing list and approved by the entire subgroup.


On the other hand, the other alignments that Simon proposed are in my humble opinion very be valuable, and should be mentioned as part of a non-normative section in the REC?


Anyways, the point I want to make here is that the SSN subgroup really needs to use a strict methodology for the discussion and integration of terms one by one from the old ssn into ssnx, sosa and the new ssn.

I suggested a clear methodology in this commit:
https://github.com/w3c/sdw/pull/536/commits/aa6dc76d0c653f5ed515b52506d64bf8184e16f5


Armin's proposal to create a wiki page for each integration issue, where we can discuss the pro and  cons of several options, and agree on a vote, is also a great way to achieve this. I will include the role of discussing the options in the wiki in this methodology.
See https://www.w3.org/2015/spatial/wiki/Semantic_Sensor_Network_Ontology


So I strongly encourage Armin to complete the reviewing process of https://github.com/w3c/sdw/pull/536 . If this pull request is merged, it could provide us with fresh new ssnx, ssn, sosa documents. We could progressively fill these documents with the definition of a new term every time the group has reached an agreement.

Kind regards,
Maxime Lefrançois

Le sam. 11 févr. 2017 à 07:06, Kerry Taylor <kerry.taylor@anu.edu.au<mailto:kerry.taylor@anu.edu.au>> a écrit :
SSN subgroup,
Just for the record (I feel somewhat ridiculous saying this):

We, the ssn focus group have been assured on more than one occasion that we are to take no notice of ‘https://github.com/w3c/sdw/blob/gh-pages/ssn/rdf/ssn-sosa.ttl”  (nor any other of the files in  https://github.com/w3c/sdw/tree/gh-pages/ssn/rdf , with the exception of sosa.ttl) and this is only a way of documenting someone’s opinion and has no status more than that.

Therefore , we are safe to assume the fact that it is being updated very recently  does not change that status. https://github.com/w3c/sdw/commit/c52f0174ab8feca0e325cf22e487c85dfb3a096a


(Sorry folks,  just  preparing for the expected  “…but we all decided that.  Because it has been there  in public all this time , and so it’s all done ….”  type claim).

ISSUE-139
-Kerry