Summary of reviews on the Website Requirements document

This page contains a summary of the feedback provided by the TDWG Executive Committee and TDWG Subgroup Conveners regarding the TIP documents submitted for review in Dec 2005.

Reviewer: Walter Berendsohn

• How do we deal with standard data served dynamically (via web services) in the context of the requirement R1.1. Comprehensive Standards Repository?
  • We consider web services implementing TDWG value standards (e.g. controlled vocabularies) to be part of reference implementations of such standards. For that reason, TDWG would not have the responsibility for managing or maintaining such services. However, in particular cases, it may make sense for TDWG to support services related to standards. Those cases should be analyses individually. Examples are: RDF/OWL ontologies and maybe XML Schema namespaces.

• Walter Berendsohn makes a couple of comments regarding persistence of URLs:
  1. Both requirements R1.5. Stable Web Address for Standards and R2.4. Stable Web Addresses for Group Areas should be ranked as MUST instead of SHOULD; and
  2. In requirement R4.3. Flexible Navigation, pages should never be removed and changes in page hierarchy should not change URLs to existing pages.
  • It is highly desirable to have persistent URLs for any website resource, including standards, subgroup pages, news entries, general documentation, and any other page. So I added the requirement R4.18. Persistent URLs which states that. I have kept the specific requirements about stable URLs for standards and subgroup pages for emphasis.

Reviewer: Arthur Chapman

• There is no mention of onsite Search.
  • Added to the document as requirement R4.17 Onsite Search (Must).

• Include the requirement that Web pages should all include date last updated and mention how to cite the page at bottom of it.
  • Added to the document as requirement R5.6 Conformance to Content Metadata Standards (Should).

• Include the requirement that all web pages MUST conform to Content Metadata Standards (e.g. Dublin Core or related).
  • Added to the document as requirement R5.7 Web Page Metadata (Must).

Reviewer: Nazomi Ytow

• Requirement R3.5. Traceability of Design Decisions should be ranked as Must. It makes detection of misunderstanding easier, with aid of such as an issue tracking tool.

• • This requirement is certainly important. However, we assigned rank Should to it because it depends on other decisions that have not been made yet. For example, it is uncertain whether the new TDWG process will impose the use of certain tools for standards development. If TDWG Process does not mandate the use of a Issue Tracking Tool by the subgroups, this requirement cannot be ranked Must. However, if we end up implementing this feature, then we can use a Issue Tracking System (as you recommended) or a Version Control System (such as Subversion).

-- RicardoPereira - 06 Jan 2006

Gregor Hagedorn

The document title seems to me misleading, much of it addresses standard documentation issues. The document perhaps need to be taken apart for a future presentation (next round of discussion), or it may just be an overlap with other documents.

-- GregorHagedorn - 06 Feb 2006