Category:Working Group

What is a Working Group?

In the Linked Earth context, a working group (WG) is a self-organized coalition of knowledgeable experts who elaborate and discuss the components of a data standard for their field of expertise. WGs can be created by any member of the LinkedEarth community to discuss topics of interest. The rationale for such WGs is that the paleo community is incredibly diverse, and what matters to a coral geochemist may be very different than what matters to a dendrochronologist. That being said, both might care about similar things. The WGs should just span the interests of the community and how they intersect.

Current WGs

• Floods Working Group
• Historical Documents Working Group
• Test Working Group
• Cross Archive Metadata
• Uncertainty Working Group
• Ice Cores Working Group
• OC3
• Trees Working Group
• Lake Sediments Working Group
• Speleothem Working Group
• MARPA Working Group
• Chronologies Working Group
• Marine Sediment Working Group
• Wiki Administration

They are basically of three types:

• WGs tied to particular archive, e.g. ice cores, lake sediments or trees.
• WGs discussing "longitudinal" topics (i.e. those of interest to more than 1 archive), e.g. uncertainties, chronologies and cross-archive metadata.
• WGs centered to a particular scientific project (e.g. OC3)

How to join a WG?

On your profile page, you have the option of joining working groups simply by inputting their names in the "Working Groups" tab. The only WGs to pop up are those currently in existence. If the one you want doesn't exist yet, please create it.

Note that joining a working group adds all pages belonging to that working group category to be added to the user's watchlist.

Joining a working group doesn't commit you to participate in every discussion on the subject. Rather, it lends support to the need for the creation of a standard and shows trust in the community.

How to create WG?

To create a WG, create a new page and tag it as a sub category of the WG category. The list of working groups will be shown automatically at the bottom of this page (as subcategories of the Working_Groups category). Each WG page needs the following elements:

• A list of the various group Members
• Polls on specific questions.
• A log of decisions made (e.g., table with dates and content of discussions)

To get started, just log on, look at any WG page, and just copy&paste the relevant elements. When you want to categorize any wiki page as belonging to that working group, add the working group category (at the bottom) to the wiki page. For instance, a page on layer-counting might be relevant to the tree, coral, and ice core working groups.

Working Group Charter

Membership

Membership of each WG is open to all wiki users, with some monitoring from WG coordinators. The coordinators are community members of recognized expertise who have volunteered to serve in this position. Their role is to organize discussions and check progress of other WGs to ensure maximum uniformity.

Aims

The primary goal of WGs is to standardize how paleoclimate data are described and shared. The process is defined here and the specific charge emanating from the first workshop on paleoclimate data standards is outlined on this page. Each WG should take up these questions as relevant to their interests; to ensure that common solutions are designed, WG coordinators will regularly check-in with each other and with LinkedEarth leadership.

Decision process

Each WG operates by consensus. Wiki polls track the answers to specific questions.

Timeline

The preliminary timeline of WG activities is defined here but will evolve as work begins.