Do all I
need to do to make any given webpage Dublin Core "compliant" is to add
the same meta tags to a webpage that the one I've already linked to
does?
I'm having the same problem figuring these things out. Just minutes ago I
read this web page:
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/dcmi/xmlschema/. In
the second to the last paragraph of the introduction it says:
"The schema presented in this document conform to the W3C XML Schema
(1.0) recommendations. They are suggested rather than prescribed and may,
in fact, co-exist with other schema for exchanging Dublin Core metadata.
XML schema are interoperability vehicles; the greater number of
applications that agree on a single schema the greater the ability to
easily share Dublin Core metadata. Therefore, while the committee that
formulated this proposal hopes that the proposed schema will be useful to
a breadth of applications, we recognize that different functionality,
provided by different schema, may be required by some."
Note, this doesn't seem to be an official working group but the sentiment
of the last paragraph is important. From what I have read on the Dublin
Core web site, it seems they are more interested in specifying exactly
what "fields" and qualifiers can be used in ANY method to store this kind
of data rather than a specific XML schema. By doing that, they have left
the standard open to varying ways to interpret the exact same data which
I think is a mistake. But what do I know. They do offer a couple of
"sample" schemas on their web site at
http://dublincore.org/schemas/xmls/qdc/2003/04/02/notes/. These samples
were created by the same people who I quoted earlier and the Dublin Core
Metadata Initiative (DCMI) seem to have thought highly enough of them to
post them on their own web site. But they are still just SAMPLES.
I agree with Tim Cole et al. in that these types of things need to be
locked down or at least have specific preferred schemas and DTDs.
Otherwise what's the point of having standards?
Also, what's the point of having a Dublin Core "compliant" webpage? Is
it supposed to be more indexable, or something? If so, it seems like
it'd be ripe for abuse, as people could just say whatever would suite
them the most (as is kinda the case with the keyword meta tag, which
can be "stuffed" with keywords).
Yes, it is supposed to be more indexable. Naturally this will be more
difficult if everyone chooses their own way to mark up the Dublin Core
metadata. And, yes, everything on the internet is ripe for abuse.
Fortunately, good search engines seem to do a pretty good job of
filtering out sites that attempt to abuse the system.
