Vocabularies "steward"

[Tom Donaldson]

Hi Markus,

I think I support the general idea to define Vocabularies Steward as a role within the IVOA that is distinct from WG chair roles in that it gives some more flexibility as to who has that responsibility.  The bigger issue remains that someone with the right knowledge needs to be willing and available to do the work on a somewhat sporadic schedule.

Since a new official IVOA role would add new bureaucracy, perhaps a lighter-weight alternative would be sufficient.  With a slight wording change, the responsibility could be assigned to the Semantics WG chairs *or designee*.  Maybe this is similar to standards document management where the editors need not be WG chairs (but often are), and the most available person can take on the work.  Either way I think it makes sense to decouple the role a little from the Semantics chairs.

Cheers,
Tom



On 5/11/21, 6:54 AM, "tcg-bounces at ivoa.net on behalf of Markus Demleitner" <tcg-bounces at ivoa.net on behalf of msdemlei at ari.uni-heidelberg.de> wrote:

    External Email - Use Caution

    Dear Semantics, dear TCG,

    The somewhat odd distribution is because this is mainly a, say,
    governance question, but tightly related to Semantics.

    Carlo has made a very good point in the RFC in Vocabularies 2
    (https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://wiki.ivoa.net/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/VocabulariesV20RFC__;!!CrWY41Z8OgsX0i-WU-0LuAcUu2o!mfWQxnKdP4HHWgRMY7IhOxe8zvNWL0GP86MOA1I4Rtt8Q2iG8pqUj0qGkIPgXmfwIA$ ).
    Basically, VocInVO2 assigns to the Chair/Vice Chair of the Semantics
    WG something like stewardship functions, in particular:

    * Maintaining the list of VEPs
    * Maintaining the vocabularies (i.e., adding terms as VEPs are passed,
      build the artefacts, etc)
    * Run/maintain adapters to externally managed IVOA vocabularies

    When writing the spec, I've made all ofthese responsibilities of the
    Semantics chairs -- not because I think that's where they belong but
    because there is nobody else we could plausibly assign them to; in
    particular, the document coordinator has quite a high work load
    already.

    But Carlo is right: This *is* a bit of a precendent in terms of what
    IVOA WG chairs do or don't do, and it is also right that
    administrative (if you will) functions will probably profit from
    somewhat stronger continuity than we have with the chairs and their
    limited terms.

    I believe we already have (at least) two models how this kind of
    thing is handled in the VO:

    (a) the document coordinator.  I *think* s/he is appointed as a
    person by the exec.

    (b) the IVOA web page, the mailing lists, and the Registry of
    Registries.  I *think* these are entrusted to institutions that then
    internally distribute the work load.

    Both of these models could also be applied to either a
    "vocabularies coordinator" or "the vocabularies repo".


    At least for while I'm the semantics chair, I'm happy to shoulder the
    administrative load, and so as far as I am concerned, no changes to
    the PR are really required.

    On the other hand, it's clear that a WG chairs' work load, in
    particular with document reviews, but also as regards managing the
    WGs' own standard processes, already may be discouraging to future
    candidates.   Adding further chores almost certainly will not be
    helpful then.

    Hence, I at least wanted to raise the question from the depths of the
    RFC page -- and in case you have opinions, alternative ideas or even
    motivation to take on the chores, by all means chime in.

    Thanks,

            Markus