search

tdwg / vocab

Vocabulary Maintenance Specification Task Group + SDS + VMS
11 stars 6 forks source link

Clarify the communication mechanisms that should be used during the change process #12

Closed baskaufs closed 8 years ago

baskaufs commented 9 years ago

The DwC Namespace Policy specifies in section 3 that proposed changes should be reported to the Technical Architecture Group (TAG). The only mechanism for actually doing that is to send an email to the tdwg-tag email list. In practice, changes are proposed using an issue tracker (formerly on Google Code, now on GitHub). Discussion during 30 day public comment periods is specified by the Namespace Policy to take place on the "Darwin Core mailing list" (listed as tdwg-content which is actually the general TDWG email list, not specifically for Darwin Core). The Namespace Policy is silent on how discussion should occur before public comment is announced.

The Vocabuary Maintenance Specification should specify several things:

  1. How changes are proposed. Should use of an issues tracker be specifically mentioned or should the Specification be silent on this?
  2. How discussion of the proposal should take place. This has traditionally happened on tdwg-content, although when discussions have become protracted and complicated, many people on the list zone out. However, the benefit of conducting comment on tdwg-content is that the TDWG constituency actually sees it. I'm not sure that would happen if the discussion were limited to people who "watch" a particular issues tracker. I think the intent of the Namespace Policy is that a proposal should be "ready for prime time" before it goes out to tdwg-content for an official public comment period. If there is an active task group, it could be the responsibility of the TG to move the proposal forward to the point of readiness for public comment. This is the model followed for the DwC RDF Guide, where the details were hashed out by the RDF TG before bringing it to tdwg-content. That may be overkill for a simple term addition request. It may not be possible to find out the extent to which there is interest in the term without bringing the request to tdwg-content.
  3. The existing DwC Namespace policy specifies that the official public comment period should take place on tdwg-content. This seems to work fine and should probably be left as-is.
baskaufs commented 8 years ago

The draft vocabulary maintenance specification https://github.com/tdwg/vocab/blob/master/maintenance-specification.md specifies in Section 2.2 that the Interest Group charged with maintaining a vocabulary will maintain an issues tracking system. Section 3.3.1 states that a formal proposal for a term change is made through that tracking system. With regards to the public comment period, Section 3.3.2 implies that the comment will take place on TDWG-CONTENT. Other details regarding implementation reports (Section 4), editing new documents (Section 3.4.3) are found at appropriate places in the specification.