<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On 24/10/2010, at 10:02 AM, Steve Baskauf wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; ">Bob has warned us about the dangers of asserting that a term always applies to a certain type of resource by asserting that the term has an rdfs:domain .<span> </span>However, we should not avoid attempting to assert that a resource is itself of a certain type.<span> <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span>Describing the "type" of a resource is an important part of letting potential users assess the possible fitness of use of that resource.</span></blockquote></div><br><div>Absolutely. Removing the domain and range specifiers from the properties does rather take the "semantic" out of "the semantic web". The difficulty, however, is getting them right.</div><div><br></div><div>For instance: at the moment I am attempting to apply the DwC properties to our data at <a href="http://biodiversity.org.au">biodiversity.org.au</a>. Our data has a fairly strict distinction between a name and a taxon. Taxon <a href="http://biodiversity.org.au/apni.taxon/54321">http://biodiversity.org.au/apni.taxon/54321</a> has name <a href="http://biodiversity.org.au/apni.taxon/2422">http://biodiversity.org.au/apni.taxon/2422</a> . To mark up these entities using the DwC properties, I would want to add </div><div><ul class="MailOutline"><li>scientificNameID</li><li>nameAccordingToID</li><li>higherTaxonConceptID</li></ul></div><div>to the taxon record, and </div><div><ul class="MailOutline"><li>acceptedNameUsageID</li><li>namePublishedInID</li><li>originalNameUsageID</li></ul></div><div>to the name record.</div><div><br></div><div>Now ... arguably the name record by itself can be taken as being the "nominal" taxon concept. But that's not really what our data means. As it is, I can add the properties without asserting that the name is a taxon.</div><div><br></div><div>However, I can think of two approaches to adding the domain. On the one hand, you could simply wear the implication. Yes indeed: an APNI "name" all by itself is indeed what DwC means by the word "taxon". Alternatively, the vocabulary could be corrected. A third approach: declaring my own property and stating that it is a superproperty of DwC:acceptedNameUsageID, seems like rather too much work.</div><div><br></div><div>By the way: is this the correct place to complain about missing bits and pieces in the DwC vocabulary?</div><div><br></div>
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