@jessicaaustin @mwengren many thanks for these standard name proposals and my apologies for the delay in responding. Thank you also to all those who have contributed to this interesting discussion.
It seems the discussion has reached consensus on adding the terms as standard names rather than standard name modifiers. I think this is the right approach - I haven't dug through the [CF mailing list archives](http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/pipermail/cf-metadata/) but seem to recall previous discussions in which the suggestion was made to deprecate the use of modifiers altogether, although this hasn't made its way into the conventions so far. The proposals have all now been added to the [standard names editor](http://cfeditor.ceda.ac.uk/proposals/1?status=active&namefilter=&proposerfilter=Austin&descfilter=&unitfilter=&yearfilter=&commentfilter=&filter+and+display=Filter). The names themselves look fine and canonical units of '1' is correct for flag variables. The proposed descriptions are very clear and understandable, even to a non-expert such as myself. The only change I would suggest is some additional text to help guide CF users to the most appropriate name. For example, the description of gap_test_quality_flag would be: 'A quality flag that reports the result of the Timing/Gap test, which checks that data has been received within the expected time window and has the correct time stamp. The linkage between the data variable and this variable is achieved using the ancillary_variables attribute. There are standard names for other specific quality tests which take the form of X_quality_flag. Quality information that does not match any of the specific quantities should be given the more general standard name of quality_flag'. Similar text could be added to all the descriptions, except for that of aggregate_quality_flag. (This type of guidance is provided in the descriptions of many existing standard names, such as those relating to salinity or area_type). Regarding aggregate_quality_flag, I spotted one potential problem with the description. The text 'This flag is a summary of all quality tests run for another data variable, and is set to the highest-level (worst case) flag found' could be understood to refer to the existing quality_flag name as well as the specific names in this proposal. Is that what you intend? If not, I suggest amending this part of the text to read 'This flag is a summary of all quality tests run for another data variable, which have standard names of the form X_quality_flag, and is set to the highest-level (worst case) flag found. Information contained in a variable having the generic name quality_flag is excluded from the aggregate.' If you are happy with my suggestion for additional help text and can let me know which version of the aggregate_quality_flag description is correct, then I think all the proposals can be accepted for inclusion in the standard name table. I do have a couple of further questions about aggregate_quality_flag which don't affect the current proposal but will be important for future reference: 1. If we were to add standard names for more QARTOD defined quality tests, as has already been suggested, would the results of those tests then also form part of the aggregate? 2. Would the aggregate flag include the results of quality tests that were defined by some standard other than QARTOD if they happened to appear in the same data file? Best wishes, Alison -- You are receiving this because you are subscribed to this thread. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub: https://github.com/cf-convention/cf-conventions/issues/216#issuecomment-580660455 This list forwards relevant notifications from Github. It is distinct from [email protected], although if you do nothing, a subscription to the UCAR list will result in a subscription to this list. To unsubscribe from this list only, send a message to [email protected].
