RDFS Modelling Checklist

The six-question pre-flight

1. Are your IRIs dereferenceable (HTTP-resolvable)?
2. Does every class have an rdfs:label and rdfs:comment?
3. Is the subclass hierarchy a tree-or-DAG, with no cycles?
4. Are domain/range assertions deliberate — you actually want the inferences?
5. Have you reused existing vocabularies (FOAF, Dublin Core, schema.org) where they apply?
6. Is the namespace under a stable IRI (a PURL or a domain you control long-term)?

Fail any one of those and your schema will hurt downstream consumers within a year.

The checklist is a pre-flight inspection. Every item is something a pilot can SEE (fuel, flaps, pitot tube) before take-off; skipping any single one rarely crashes the plane, but skipping the same one across 300 flights absolutely will. The same is true of a schema you publish: each item is cheap to verify before release and expensive to retrofit after downstream consumers have indexed your IRIs.