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Dear Semantics group members, <br>
<br>
Here is a summary proposed by Alberto Accomazzi, who chaired this
meeting, for the various points we agreed on:<br>
your comments , additions to it are welcome and can be circulated
on this list. <br>
<br>
Thanks , <br>
-- <br>
Mireille Louys (Semantics chair) <br>
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<div>Semantics splinter meeting summary for Vocabulary curation
:<br>
<br>
</div>
<div>
<div>It is a goal of the WG to promote the development and
maintenance of Vocabularies</div>
<div>which are useful to the Astronomical community at large.
The very existence of</div>
<div>the WG provides a forum where these issues can be
discussed.</div>
<div>Since the actual work behind vocabularies is going to be
performed by the interested</div>
<div>projects and individuals, the WG acknowledges the need
for curators to choose the </div>
<div>most appropriate way to perform their work. </div>
<div>However, to ensure that these products become useful and
adopted by the community </div>
<div>at large, the WG will promote the following activities
and practices on behalf of</div>
<div>the IVOA members.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>1. Coordination of efforts by encouraging discussion and
providing information about the vocabularies.</div>
<div> a. Discussions are most productive when conducted in
person during the IVOA </div>
<div> interop meetings but of course should also occur
via the Semantics WG mailing list.</div>
<div> b. The WG will maintain a set of <a
moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://ivoa.net">ivoa.net</a>
wiki pages documenting the current list of</div>
<div> vocabularies used by IVOA standards or otherwise of
interest to IVOA members, </div>
<div> providing information about their location and
curation process.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>2. Promotion of best practices associated with the
curation of the vocabularies.</div>
<div> a. To the extent that these resources are going to be
used by the community served by </div>
<div> the IVOA, it is important that we allow parties
involved in research, management </div>
<div> and curation of astronomical data to provide
feedback directly to the vocabulary curators</div>
<div> and to the WG as a whole.</div>
<div> b. Tracking of provenance and history: there should be
a simple way for the curators</div>
<div> and users to see what were the steps that lead to an
editorial decision in the </div>
<div> vocabulary. Ideally this be accomplished using a
version management system possibly</div>
<div> in conjunction with a ticketing system</div>
<div> c. In general, it is expected that vocabularies will
grow with the addition of new terms.</div>
<div> In order to minimize breakage, renaming of terms
should be done in such a way that </div>
<div> the deprecated term is still kept as an alternate
form if the system allows it.</div>
<div> Similarly, deletions of terms should be rare and
when they occur should be done via</div>
<div> the deprecation of the deleted term.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>3. Recommendations concerning the release of new versions
and their publications.</div>
<div> a. New versions of vocabularies which are undergoing
development should be released on a </div>
<div> regular basis at the discretion of the curators and
in response to the needs of the</div>
<div> community. Planned releases should be announced to
the WG members so that interested</div>
<div> individuals have a chance to register their opinion.</div>
<div> b. Some electronic version of the released vocabulary
will most likely be hosted by</div>
<div> the curating individual or institution. It is
strongly recommended that machine</div>
<div> readable versions of each release vetted by the WG
be hosted under the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://ivoa.net">ivoa.net</a> website </div>
<div> in SKOS, Turtle, and HTML format.</div>
<div> c. While different vocabulary versions can be
identified by version-specific top-level URIs,</div>
<div> URIs associated with vocabulary terms should not be
versioned to provide greater</div>
<div> resiliency to the applications which make use of
them.</div>
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