Construction industry knowledge standard
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It has been suggested that the standard should be more prescriptive about the structure of documents. For example, requiring the preparation of an abstract of a certain length.
It has been suggested that the section on images should be expanded to make clear that images should be provided separately at high resolution so that they can be re-sized without loss of quality and so they can be properly indexed and licensed.
Should the standard be developed to include a system for tracking the provenance of knowledge, that is, where did it come from and where else is it used? This might be done by allocating a unique identifier to each piece of knowledge.
Include instructions for how to attach licences to knowledge.
Images need to be provided separately and separately indexed so that they are searchable.
How should very long documents be prepared? Should they be broken into chapters or presented as one very long file? Should a summary be published following a standard format, and linked to the full document?
Linked content (such as the data from which a graph has been created) should be in native or open format.
Images should be provided as image files, not for example as word objects.
Bulleted lists and numbered lists should be properly formatted lists, not normal paragraphs with bullet or number characters at the beginning.
Pull out captions should not be used. It is generally not clear where they fit in the flow of the text.
Images must be part of the flow. Not separated from the text to which they relate, or with text wrapped, or in separate windows.
The use of the future tense in text is limiting. It will become the past.
Be more prescriptive about how to make text accessible to / usable by a wider audience.
Is there a way of making references non-sequential so that sections of content can be re-used without the need to re-number references?
Can it be tailored more to report writing?
Some documents are private, or copyrighted - which licenses are suitable?
Think about what people are looking for rather than what you can publish. Start typing your subject into google and see what it predicts you are looking for.
Is it better to have the subject in the URL as well as the page title?
Is there a way of flagging up / informing the author when a piece of knowledge is no longer current?
Documents should be provided in native format or an open format, rather than as a pdf which is difficult to re-process or use.
Some knowledge is proprietary, and whilst it could be produced following a standard, it would not be accessible or licensed for use by others.
Online content should not be moved as this breaks links to them from other content. If it is necessary to move online content, redirects to the new location should be left behind.
Provenance attributes:
- Qualifications, status, suitable uses, reliability, disclaimer, current, refereed / certified / checked etc
- Tag quoted / used content for original provenance.
- Tag time-dependent info for checking.
Version control makes collaboration easier.
Provide templates
Look at CrossMark system.
Use only UTF- characters.
Record when the document was originally created - is it maintained / current / archived.
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