[tdwg-content] [tdwg-tag] Inclusion of authorship in DwC scientificName: good or bad?

[Steve Baskauf]

Well, I get your point and it certainly wouldn't be a huge burden on 
developers to check both the Latin and English names.  But I thought the 
whole point of suggesting a controlled vocabulary was so that people 
would have one recommended value to use for each state they want to 
represent.  Why do we have ISO 639-1 language codes?  A good developer 
could just check for English, english, EN, en, eng., Eng., Engl, engl., 
etc. etc.
Steve

Bob Morris wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 19, 2010 at 8:56 AM, Steve Baskauf
> <steve.baskauf at vanderbilt.edu> wrote:
>   
>> [concensus discussion]
>> ...  Why make all software check for two alternatives
>> when a consensus would fix the problem?  (Consensus... did I say that
>> word in a tdwg-content email????)
>>     
>
> Ummm, because plenty of data will not meet the consensus? Because
> robust software checks for things that may occur even if  they violate
> expectations, rules, standards, recommendations, conventions, or
> consensus?
>
> One model of consensus might be "what most of the real current data
> does". Since so much biodiversity data is dirty,  I'm pretty sure that
> would bring howls from taxonomists following this list. But it would
> also have a shot at exposing more data, if one also believes that most
> consuming applications are not robust. Better is for the community to
> make recommendations (by consensus or some other mechanism) and let
> developers of non-robust applications accept responsibility for their
> non-robustness.
>
> My self-serving(*) position is that a huge amount of dirty current
> data is being served by organizations/people who have no idea that it
> is dirty, and no systematic way to find out that it is. By contrast,
> the relatively small number of client developers are likely to have a
> good idea of where the dirt is and often can deal with it. The
> well-known social problem with that arises in circumstances such as
> yours, where domain scientists are writing software out of necessity
> or urgency, and rightfully want to get on with their science. They
> then have to make choices about where to spend their time: on software
> engineering or science. Many have little choice, since they are paid
> to be scientists, not software engineers.  Nor are lay software
> engineers the only authors of non-robust software. Analogous
> time-constraints imposed on professionals often result in the same
> kinds of problems.  Alas, there is no single solution to this
> conundrum. But my (not biologically informed) guess is that for the
> problem in this thread, supporting both alternatives does not impose a
> big burden on developers.  In which case there is no need for
> consensus. :-)
>
> Bob Morris
> (*) http://etaxonomy.org/mw/FP2010:_Continuous_Quality_Control
>   

-- 
Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences

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