Hi all,
Would someone be available to join our next board meeting to discuss
this issue?
https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Board_Meeting_2019-10-28
Regards,
Angelos
On 10/15/19 9:52 PM, Cameron Shorter wrote:
OSGeo Board, OSGeo Discuss,
I'd like to introduce you to this proposal that Ron and Reese have
been developing on the OSGeo Standards email list, which I think
should fit under the legal structure of an OSGeo Committee.
I have vague recollections that setting up a committee requires board
approval? I've found some old tips on running a committee here:
https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Committee_Guidelines
Comments welcomed.
On 15/10/19 4:47 pm, Ronald Tse wrote:
Hi Cameron,
Thank you for the suggestions! I have updated the proposal to reflect
your comments below.
I would be honored to help with terminology management at OSGeo.
Can’t speak for Reese but with his leadership in already doing
terminology cleanup on Felicity’s sheet, he seems pretty committed
already :-)
Ron
———
Recommendations for OSGeo terminology management
1. Establish a terminology management group in OSGeo.
ISO/TC 211, IEC Electropedia and OGC all have one for terminology
management. The existence of this group is crucial to the success
of the OSGeo terminology database. It will play two essential roles:
a) As the gatekeeper of terms to ensure quality checks of contributions
b) As the seat of central terminology knowledge for alignment of
terms and concepts. To facilitate the flow of terminology knowledge
to terminology authors and users.
It would be helpful to involve representation from ISO/TC 211 and OGC
in this group, in order to leverage their experience in
terminology. Such experience will be useful in situations such as
alerting on cross-organization alignment of concepts or term
duplication.
An email list shall be setup for this group for internal communication.
2. Establish a terms of reference for terminology management.
For the terminology management group, a terms of reference should be
produced so that the steps for approval and data quality requirements
are clear. This should be openly shared with contributors so they are
clear on acceptance criteria.
Contributors may propose changes to the terminology database at any
time. The terminology management group shall discuss and approve or
disapprove of the proposal within a reasonable timeframe. This
practice is in-line with the open source, change-based,
rapid iteration mantra, similar to OpenSSL.
For releases, the group shall convene periodically, such as every 4-6
months, to discuss previously decided proposals, governance
or technical issues related to terminology management.
The method of submitting change requests shall also be determined and
announced so that contributors understand the necessary processes and
timeline.
3. Establish an online terminology database presence.
Terminology isn’t useful until people use them, which means people
need to first know they exist and what they mean. Geolexica is
an initiative that currently serves ISO/TC 211’s terminology
management group in making its multi-lingual geographic information
terminology available on the internet (https://www.geolexica.org). We
propose to use https://osgeo.geolexica.org/ to serve OSGeo in
managing its terminology database. Geolexica not only serves
human-readable concepts and terms, but also serves in
machine-readable JSON, allowing APIs to directly consume the content.
The structure of Geolexica is designed for efficiency with
streamlined management and operations. Terms are stored in structured
data (YAML) files, and are directly deployable to the website. The
website operates according to best practices, and is served as a
static website with dynamic search functionality. Security and
performance have always been key considerations.
For terms that originate from other authoritative terminology
databases, such as those from ISO or OGC, a linkage shall be
established from the OSGeo terminology database back to the source.
4. Use an issue tracker with source code management functionality as
an open communication platform (e.g. GitHub).
The issue tracker is used to perform two-way communication between
OSGeo members and the contributors. This requires every contributor
to at least have an account, which helps minimize spam. The source
code management functionality is used to manage terminology data in a
machine-useable way.
There are generally two types of contributors:
a) those who suggest changes via textual description, and
b) those who suggest changes but can also format the desired content
in the data format used by the terminology database.
People can easily help out with the former in formatting the changes
into a proper data structure change. This allows the
terminology management group to directly approve, merge and deploy
the proposed term modifications (and creations, deletions), all made
