DwC simply uses classes to categorize things and to suggest the types of terms that one might use to describe instances of those classes, but otherwise stays out of our
personal
data management lives.
Yes, I agree with you on that -- but it may get confusing trying to share data when some providers brand their "things" as instances of CollectionObjects, and some brand them as instances of Organism. Maybe some "best practices" guidelines could help. Or, maybe I'm worried about something that may not end up representing a real problem. I guess time will tell.
In my mind, this should always be "Organism".
Totally. Is this the first time I've agreed with everything Rich has
said? :-)
If so, then the credit is all yours. Your very thoughtfully-worded posts during this long debate (all of which I have read, and forced myself to understand) have re-shaped my own view of how this information ought to be represented. A major breakthrough for me was the realization that "Organism" and "CollectionObject" were not necessarily the same things (again, thanks to you for allowing me to get my head around that). Once I got there, the other stuff (e.g., organisms as homogeneous taxa) all sort of fell into place.
This has been a long, but (I think) very productive discussion. My only hope is that it will actually work, and be practical, in the real world of biodiversity information exchange.
I'm also wondering if we necessarily need to "break" the traditional view of the "Occurrence" class in order to implement Organism and CollectionObject. As long as we keep in mind that DwC is a vocabulary of terms focused on representing an exchange standard (rather than a full-blown Ontology), perhaps Occurrence records can continue to be represented in the traditional way as "flat" content, but the Organism and CollectionObject classes allow us to present data in a somewhat more "normalized" way in those circumstances that call for it (e.g. tracking individuals or groups over time [Organism], or managing fossil rocks with multiple taxa [CollectionObject] -- to name just two).
Aloha, Rich