Given prior comments I think I should rephrase my prior comments about free text since if is not contradictory to what most others have said since, although it might not seem that way.

I think that everyone should produce the most standardized, consistent and meaningful data possible, grounded only on fact and direct observation. If we had a perfect data model and everyone did that all our problems would be solved! Problem is that we'll never make a data model that can capture all of the semantics of the natural world. Even with the expressive power of Natural Languages we can not do that, certainly no taxonomic data standard will. So there will always be information that is important to communicate to other people that will not fit well through the thin pipe of the formal specifications. When that nasty and unfortunate thing happens, the standard needs to handle it. We don't want people on real projects avoiding using the standard because there is some critical piece of information that just will not fit through the data model.

Then there is a legacy data... we'll never get enough money to fit it into a data model to the atomic level. Text blobs will have to do for some of that.

Structure is good when we can get it.

Bryan

At 09:08 AM 9/7/00 +1000, Mike Dallwitz wrote:

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From: "P. F. Stevens" peter.stevens@MOBOT.ORG To: TDWG-SDD@USOBI.ORG

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producing comparative data is difficult. Nevertheless, shouldn't this be one of the main objectives of taxonomy?

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Absolutely. And surely this is what we are trying to facilitate here, and what guides the discussion.

My comments were in response to Kevin Thiele's opinion:

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I think part of the basic problem is [trying] to force too much structure and while this is a great promise it's been an impediment in practice.

'Structure' apparently means a character list, i.e. the basis for producing comparative data. Although Kevin says elsewhere that both structured and unstructured data should be allowed (and I agree - they are allowed in DELTA), the above statement seems to suggest that the 'impediment' should be avoided by encouraging the use of non-comparative data.

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Mike Dallwitz

CSIRO Entomology, GPO Box 1700, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia Phone: +61 2 6246 4075 Fax: +61 2 6246 4000 Email: md@ento.csiro.au Internet: biodiversity.uno.edu/delta/