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This is a good point and one with which I generally agree. In this
particular case, the term IndividualOrganism has its roots in the
discussion of last October/November. At that time, I had proposed
adding a class to Darwin Core called dwc:Individual which would be the
object of the existing term dwc:individualID. In that discussion,
there were various options that were thrown around for the class name
but in the end, it was left as Individual to correspond with the
individualID term (in the same way that dwc:occurrenceID goes with
dwc:Occurrence, dwc:eventID goes with dwc:Event, etc.). Since Cam and
my intention was for the class dsw:IndividualOrganism to mean the same
thing as I had originally wanted the proposed dwc:Individual class to
mean, we stuck with the "Individual" part even though the definition
always allowed for small groups of organisms (see the definition of
dwc:individualID at
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm#individualID">http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/terms/index.htm#individualID</a>). However, since
DSW is designed for the semantic web/LOD world and since "individual"
has a different technical meaning in that context, we thought
"IndividualOrganism" was more clear than just "Individual" (I think
Pete DeVries first suggested IndividualOrganism somewhere in the
discussion). Whether or not that was the best choice or not, I don't
know. Often "IndividualOrganism" actually does correspond to an
individual organism, so calling it that does allow for a certain amount
of visualization of what it represents, although as the discussion of
Oct/Nov showed, there may be problems associated with trying to put too
much concrete meaning on something that is essentially abstract.<br>
<br>
By the way, as far as I know the proposal for the dwc:Individual class
is still on the table since as far as I know the TAG has taken no
action to submit it to an up or down vote. Given that, I suppose there
is still some rationale for maintaining a connection between
dsw:IndividualOrganism and the proposed dwc:Individual class, although
as the definition of the dwc:Individual class was left when the subject
was dropped, it was allowed to have instances which were taxonomically
heterogeneous (unlike dsw:IndividualOrganism). In that sense, the
proposed dwc:Individual class is more like what we called
"LivingEntity" in the alternative ontology (see
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://code.google.com/p/darwin-sw/wiki/TaxonomicHeterogeneity">http://code.google.com/p/darwin-sw/wiki/TaxonomicHeterogeneity</a> for more
on this). At this point, I have lost interest in the dwc:Individual
class proposal, since with DSW we are accomplishing what I wanted to do
with that proposal (i.e. provide clearly defined class names that could
be used with rdf:type, to provide a means to infer duplicates, and
allow for resampling). In particular, we reached the conclusion that
the dwc:xxxxxxID terms were not useful in the context of RDF since
their meaning was not clear. Instead, we defined new terms to connect
the classes that had clear domains and ranges, so dwc:individualID is
not really relevant to the discussion in the context of DSW.<br>
<br>
Steve<br>
<br>
Mark Wilden wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid:BANLkTinPsj14cWYH0X9gXugunCGWMMnZDg@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">2011/4/28 Steve Baskauf <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:steve.baskauf@vanderbilt.edu"><steve.baskauf@vanderbilt.edu></a>:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">As a point of
clarification, the class dsw:IndividualOrganism as we have defined it in DSW
does not specify that an instance of the class must actually be an
individual organism [...] At
one point we considered using the name TaxonomicallyHomogeneousEntity, but
that seemed unwieldy.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
If that's what it is, then that's what it should be called, in my
opinion. To have the term InvidualOrganism not actually mean
"individual organism" is asking for trouble. Call it what it is, then
try to think of a better term. But don't use the wrong term just
because it's less unwieldy.
That's how I name things, as a programmer (not an ontology-creator).
In general, if I find that a thing is hard to name, then I don't
really understand what it represents. Some concepts are simply
unwieldy, though, but the name should still be accurate.
My two cents - no doubt worth less. :)
///ark
Web Applications Developer
Center for Applied Biodiversity Informatics
California Academy of Sciences
.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Steven J. Baskauf, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer
Vanderbilt University Dept. of Biological Sciences
postal mail address:
VU Station B 351634
Nashville, TN 37235-1634, U.S.A.
delivery address:
2125 Stevenson Center
1161 21st Ave., S.
Nashville, TN 37235
office: 2128 Stevenson Center
phone: (615) 343-4582, fax: (615) 343-6707
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu">http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu</a>
</pre>
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