<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 3:13 PM, Gregor Hagedorn <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:g.m.hagedorn@gmail.com">g.m.hagedorn@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="im">> If this is so trivial then why does GBIF have one map for Felis concolor and<br>
> one map for Puma concolor?<br>
> also why does the Barcode of life not have all their Aedes triseriatus and<br>
> Ochlerotatus triseriatus mapped to one id rather than one for each name and<br>
> misspelling?<br>
<br>
</div>I think it shows that the real problem is not URLs versus strings, the<br>
problem is the knowledge behind these strings.<br>
<div class="im"><br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Actually I think the problem lies with the co-mingled use of a scientific name. It is serving as both a stable identifier and as a phylogenetic hypothesis.</div>
<div><br></div><div>The concept of a "species" should have been separated from the hypothesis about where in the phylogenetic tree that concept fits.</div><div><br></div><div>The mosquito example above also demonstrates the conflict between those who want to use names as stable identifiers and those who want them to reflect the latest phylogenetic thinking. </div>
<div><br></div><div>The mosquito community seems split on this, so I would say that their is either no accepted name or two accepted names.</div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="im"><br>
</div>It certainly happens that bugs appear even after 20 years of using<br>
URLs, but it is a class of highly generic bugs in any web-software. It<br>
does not appear a good argument to me.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Yes, it would have been better if things like & or () did not need to be encoded for use in URL's but as a community we could simply decide to use some other characters at least for URL's etc. If we wanted to use full names in URLs.</div>
<div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<br>
I am not aware that people have problems linking to Wikipedia or<br>
DBpedia, which happens to use exactly these human-proofreadable URIs.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>The URLs for different Wikipedia and DBpedia entries change all the time.</div><div><br></div><div>I have had problems, the URLs for several mosquitoes have changed along with the URL for Carl Linnaeus since I started this.</div>
<div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div class="im">> Also aren't TDWG URI's supposed to be opaque?<br>
<br>
</div>Why do we use dwc:scientificName instead of<br>
dwc:entity013030d4a93abdd6206234b683c51b31 ?<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I think there are LSID'ers who are doing something like that right now.</div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<br>
I am sure the semantic vocabulary management system for DarwinCore<br>
would show the proper label for the opaque URI... :-)<br>
<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>This is a feature of the TripleStore (actually a Quadstore) you just have to tweak the settings to get it to work.</div><div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
Basically, programmers demand human readability for their own domain,<br>
but deny it to the biodiversity domain itself...<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I think you might be mischaracterizing me. I started down this road while trying to solve biological problems.</div><div><br></div><div>
I argued years ago on TDWG for some identifier for the species concept as opposed to an identifier for a name.</div><div><br></div><div>When that failed I started creating my own.</div><div><br></div><div>Intuitively you know that records for <i>Felis concolor</i> and records for <i>Puma concolor</i> should appear on the same map, but without some concept id, it can't happen.</div>
<div><br></div><div>In an ideal world, the name should be for the concept and the changing phylogeny should simply be new assertions about that concept.</div><div><br></div><div><meta charset="utf-8"><div>Then you would not have millions of collection labels with the wrong name on them.</div>
</div><div><br></div><div>I would argue that the current nomenclatural system with all its codes and rules has little to do with real biology.</div><div><br></div><div>Many of the problems we are now dealing with would go away if a new system was created that was based on the biology we know today rather than trying to work around a system that was based on what people thought 250 years ago.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I don't see that happening except in a few areas like Bacteriology, so for now we have to devise complex informatics systems to work around a fundamentally flawed system.</div><div><br></div><div>*(My opinion)</div>
<div><br></div><div>> I just believe that those taking these decisions have a specific perspective and use case scenarios, that involves biologists only after the perfect software user interface system is finished. I challenge the last assumption </div>
<div><br></div><div>I also wish that the TDWG standards would include specific semantic uses cases and test data so that people could actually see if it works for them.</div><div><br></div><div>That is what I am trying to do with my examples, which are constantly being revised; but I am clearly not a member of the mysterious TDWG Illuminati.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Respectfully,</div><div><br></div><div>- Pete</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<br>
I fully believe you and all who are doing it do it with careful<br>
consideration of the needs as they see it. I just believe that those<br>
taking these decisions have a specific perspective and use case<br>
scenarios, that involves biologists only after the perfect software<br>
user interface system is finished. I challenge the last assumption ...<br>
<br>
Redesign tdwg vocabularies and Darwincore with opaque<br>
dwc:concept013030d4a93abdd6206234b683c51b31 URIs instead of<br>
dwc:commonName (where I really prefer the synonym vernacularName - or<br>
is it the other way round?) and proof that it works well for<br>
communication and discussion.<br>
<br>
I believe Opaque IDs work OK if they can be systematically and<br>
unambiguously assigned. Taxon names and concepts can not, they need to<br>
be discussed and "debugged" probably over decades. Just like tdwg<br>
vocabularies -- just 6 orders of magnitude greater scope.<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
Gregor<br>
</font></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>---------------------------------------------------------------<br>Pete DeVries<br>Department of Entomology<br>University of Wisconsin - Madison<br>445 Russell Laboratories<br>
1630 Linden Drive<br>Madison, WI 53706<br><a href="http://www.taxonconcept.org/" target="_blank">TaxonConcept Knowledge Base</a> / <a href="http://lod.geospecies.org/" target="_blank">GeoSpecies Knowledge Base</a><br><a href="http://about.geospecies.org/" target="_blank">About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base</a><br>
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