[Esip-documentation] ACDD 1.3 approval vote initiated

[Bob Simons - NOAA Federal via Esip-documentation]

I understand/sympathize with the problem of circular definitions 
(they're circular!), but I prefer them over the non-circular 
definitions. The non-circular definitions tend to re-define the term in 
a different and more specific way that works well for the author but not 
for everyone. Then you have two "definitions" that subtly disagree: one 
inferred from the attribute name and one in the attribute's definition. 
If an attribute refers to the 'creator', then why should we define it as 
the person who originated the dataset?  Isn't that the 'originator'?  
Are you saying that creator = originator?!  They mean/imply different 
things to me. I think of the originator as the entity that e.g., created 
some L1 satellite data, ....  I think of the creator as the person who 
created *this* data to which this metadata is attached, e.g., the L3 
satellite data which is derived from the L1 data.
(To give credit to the originator, use contributor_name=/someEntity/ and 
contributor_role="originator" or "source of L1 data".) Perhaps you see 
it differently. Fine. But please don't define terms away from legitimate 
interpretations of the words in the attribute's name.

This is the English language, not a computer language. There will always 
be gray areas in interpretations. There will always be problems using a 
general metadata standard with a wide variety of specific datasets. 
Isn't that what our human judgement is for? That's the nature of the 
beast. Accept it. Do your best.


On 2014-12-23 9:28 AM, Nan Galbraith via Esip-documentation wrote:
> I'm going to have to vote no, mainly because of the remaining circular
> definitions of the terms for roles - creator and publisher.
>
> For creator (or creator_name), we had agreed on 'the person principally
> responsible for originating this data' - I know there was a lot of 
> discussion on this but I had no idea we were rolling back to the
> original non-definition, 'the person principally responsible for
> creating this data'.  My understanding was that some people had been
> adverse to changing from creator to creator_name, but were fine with
> 'person principally responsible for originating the data'.
>
> Since the versions and discussion pages have disappeared, I can't 
> confirm the wording that I thought we'd agreed upon, without paging
> through dozens of emails with subject lines that don't reflect the 
> contents.
>
> One of the main problems with the original version of ACDD, IMHO, was
> that the definitions were not useful or clear. If we're not going to
> fix that, then I don't see much use in updating the spec.
>
> Regards - Nan
>
>
>
> Quoting John Graybeal via Esip-documentation 
> <esip-documentation at lists.esipfed.org>:
>
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> On the Documentation Cluster call today, we initiated the vote on
>> approving ACDD 1.3. As agreed, we will keep this vote open to
>> Documentation Cluster members until end of the day December 31,
>> 2014. You can vote on whether to approve the convention at
>> http://doodle.com/t7tni9ab2a2xhnmf.
>>
>> As our validation that no one is spamming that link, once voting has
>> closed I'll copy the final names and votes into an email to this
>> list, so that everyone can see their vote was recorded correctly.
>>
>> Other results of the discussion:
>>
>> We clarified that none of the 1.2 versions were ever approved or
>> recommended for use; the recommended version is 1.1 as of today, and
>> will be 1.3 once it is approved. (Some have informally recommended
>> 1.3 already.)
>>
>> We made a minor change to the document; and I agreed to make one
>> other change to the associated documentation once version 1.3 is
>> approved:
>>
>> The minor adjustment was to move creator_url to the Recommended
>> section, to be consistent with the publisher_url recommendation.
>>
>> The documentation change is that non-normative documents which are
>> referenced by 1.3 in the Additional Materials section (things like
>> mappings, ISO translation, order of precedence, etc.) will have
>> appropriate notations added to the top of each document, reflecting
>> that they are historical references and not normative or necessarily
>> current. As these are not normative, I feel comfortable changing
>> them as seems appropriate, subject to further review of course.
>>
>> And with that, our changes to the ACDD 1.3 voting document have been
>> completed, and I thank everyone for your patience, participation,
>> and persistence throughout!
>>
>> Please vote!
>>
>> John
>>
>>
>>
>> ---------------
>> John Graybeal
>> Marine Metadata Interoperability Project: http://marinemetadata.org
>> MMI Ontology Registry and Repository: http://mmisw.org/orr
>> email: jbgraybeal at mindspring.com
>> skype: graybealski
>
>
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-- 
Sincerely,

Bob Simons
IT Specialist
Environmental Research Division
NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center
99 Pacific St, Suite 255A (New!)
Monterey, CA 93940 (New!)
Phone: (831)333-9878 (New!)
Fax: (831)648-8440
Email: bob.simons at noaa.gov

The contents of this message are mine personally and
do not necessarily reflect any position of the
Government or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration.
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