Public review of Darwin Core proposals extended.
Discussion of the Darwin Core Data Packages (DwC-DP) proposal has ticked up over the last few weeks, so the ongoing public comment period will continue beyond the originally announced 90 days, which would have ended on December 15.
If you are unfamiliar with the functioning of public comment periods for vocabulary changes, please review Section 3.3.2 of the Vocabulary
Maintenance specification. To summarize briefly, if there is dissent about a proposal, the proposal may be modified in an attempt to achieve consensus. Any such modification triggers a reset of a 30 day clock to give people sufficient time to consider the modified proposal.
Because of this mechanism, it is possible for a small number of people to delay the acceptance of a proposal that is as large and complex as
DwC-DP for a long time. In the case of DwC-DP, there are a large number of smaller individual proposals that are being considered as a package, and modification of any one of the individual proposals will delay the acceptance of the overall package for another 30 days.
The Darwin Core Maintenance Group is committed to a fair and open review process of the DwC-DP, and will allow the public review to continue for as long as necessary to achieve consensus. So as long as there is active discussion, we will keep the public comment period open. However,
because there is keen interest in the community from people who want to use DwC-DP in ratified form, we'd prefer that the review not drag on
indefinitely due to people not getting around to reviewing it in a timely fashion. Therefore, if you have not yet reviewed the proposal, I
ask that you do so and submit your comments by January 16. If those comments do not result in any changes in any part of the proposal after
that date, the public comment could end on February 15 (30 days later). Continuing discussion after January 16 would cause the comment to
continue correspondingly longer, and that's fine if the discussion continues to improve the proposal.
We have gotten many excellent and substantive suggestions so far that have improved the proposal, and I am grateful for those who have taken
the time to thoughtfully review and comment. I am hopeful that we will soon have a strong final proposal that the Task Group will be able to recommend ratification by the Executive Committee.
Sincerely,
Steve Baskauf
Darwin Core Maintenance Group convener
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