SV and Thesaurus - decide

[Frederic V. Hessman]

 > If you're going to go and build a framework where we can fit our own
 > words and collaboratively create and manage a vocabulary to annotate
 > and categorize our content then I vote YES. If what is being voted on
 > here is going off and building a big list of words, I vote NO.

> I called for a decision on the draft SV: Doug and Rick have  
> reminded us that at least 2 WGs need it. Practical use cases (like  
> the basic ones I put in a recent msg) are not treated in the draft,  
> so I assume that there is a request to edit the draft to include  
> some. Perfect, this is why we are discussing the draft in the WG.  
> We have all the elements to take a decision.
>
> I didn't call yet for a decision on the astronomical vocabulary/ 
> thesaurus/ontology.
> There are basic questions asked by Tony on this second topic (for  
> instance: who needs it and to do what) that are yet not answered at  
> all. We certainly need to discuss more on this.
Even if you think a common list of tokens is useless, be Darwinian  
and simply wait for the experiment to fail (if it does) rather than  
preventing others from using it as an initial lingua franca; if you  
think you can do a much better job, then go do it - in the meanwhile,  
I'll be able to say that my image contains a galaxy, and I'll look  
forward to being able to do this in a much more powerful manner later  
on (I could say MUCH later on, but I feel generous).

Even if you think that XYZ is the world's best possible vocabulary  
format or that the right format hasn't been developed yet,  
acknowledge that the choice only matters if you want to do complex  
ontological manipulations (any format at all for token vocabularies  
can be easily converted to something else) and let us agree on a  
basic packaging format for token vocabularies alone (even if the  
packaging is ASCII lists).  Then Alasdair can go off and produce the  
list of tokens which blows the IAU thesaurus out of the water and  
we'll all agree how he can pass it off to our apps.


Rick


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Dr. Frederic V. Hessman     Hessman at Astro.physik.Uni-Goettingen.DE
Institut für Astrophysik          Tel.  +49-551-39-5052
Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1         Fax +49-551-39-5043
37077 Goettingen                 Room F04-133
http://www.Astro.physik.Uni-Goettingen.de/~hessman
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