EML-discuss listserve?

[cboettig]

Is there an EML-discuss listserve where users could pose questions about recommended way to encode certain things? Could potentially be a valuable interface between users and developers (kinda the way r-sig-phylo, and to lesser extent, nexml-discuss lists work).

I encounter this kind of challenge all the time now as I think about adding EML annotation to my own work. Forcing myself to write out the metadata would have helped me avoid errors like the one that scared me for the last 24 hours where I mistook a 'profits' column as a profits-costs column. I'm often working with simulated data, which I have no idea how to annotate properly; first because the units are often arbitrary, and second because it's obviously crucial it does not get mistaken for 'real' data if it is ever archived on a service like KNB. Would love to tap some community guidance on how to handle simulated data.

As we step into semantics/ontology realm, being able to poll community input becomes particularly important, both in making choices and recognizing priorities for future ontology development, as we're discovering in NeXML where essentially all metadata must be semantic. (e.g. ropensci/RNeXML#24, ropensci/RNeXML#26)

[mbjones]

The official EML discussion list is [email protected]. You can subscribe at http://lists.nceas.ucsb.edu/ecoinformatics/mailman/listinfo/eml-dev. The list is very quiet these days, as EML has been fairly stable. But there are occasional bursts of activity, and occasional discussions. Most everyone subscribed has a pretty solid knowledge of EML.