Today I had a long discussion on metadata. I was arbitrating a discussion at a client site and the meeting was initially a mess. It turned out that everyone had their own definition of metadata.
The system we’re working on is a highly configurable distributed web-based content management system. The system is configurable to be able to adapt to any new kind of content and linking between the content.
The development team had been using the word metadata to define the data that defines the structures and editorial rules for the content (e.g., a person has a first name, last name, birthdata, etc).
Another team had used metadata to describe lifecycle information around the content (e.g., when created, original source, etc).
Yet another team used the term metadata to define the taxonomy of the data.
So… I did a search on the net to see if someone had a good definition we could ‘borrow’. After reading a few hundred definitions online, I’ve come to the conclusion NEVER to use the word metadata again without an accompanying glossary.
I’ll probably eventually end up using the definitions from W3C… that is, metadata is generic term that can mean all the definitions above and to be really useful have to be further qualified.
In case you’re interested, here are the various terms we’ll use:

Administrative metadata:
Metadata used in managing and administering information resources, e.g., location or donor information. Includes rights and access information,

Technical metadata:
Metadata used by design/implementation team to describe implementation lifecycles (e.g., logical delete).

Onthology Definitions:
Definition of data structures and semantic relationships.

Taxonomy Definitions:
Data required to support categorization and organization of content and metadata (typically for the purpose of navigation).