[tdwg-content] proposed term: dwc:verbatimScientificName

[Chuck Miller]

Perhaps we need to add a "rule" element as Bob Morris has suggested.
Then with that additional fact, the usage of the other terms would be
specifically declared by the provider and all this
assumption/inferencing would not be needed, where the declaration of the
rule was provided.  

But, millions of rows of legacy data may never conform to anything done
at this point.  If the meaning of ScientificName is altered by a
definitional change after 10 years of the DarwinCore term being used
with a different definition, no doubt the end result will be even more
world-wide data hegemony because there will not be a sudden switchover
of all the legacy data to the new definition.  That herd of elephants is
not going to turn quickly, so for some long time you really won't know
what you have in a given ScientificName field - the old definition or
the new.

Chuck

-----Original Message-----
From: tdwg-content-bounces at lists.tdwg.org
[mailto:tdwg-content-bounces at lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Richard Pyle
Sent: Thursday, December 09, 2010 10:04 AM
To: 'Gregor Hagedorn'
Cc: tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org
Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] proposed term: dwc:verbatimScientificName

> Rich, it is not a question of __formatting__; concatenation is just 
> not possible, you have to parse into EVERY name, take it apart, 
> determine whether it is an autonym, and if so __insert__ the author at

> the correct position for botanical names.

Yes, but that's the responsibility of the provider.  Either they have
the information sufficiently atomized to populate verbatimScientificName
appropriately for autonyms, or they just have a pre-formatted
"scientificNameWithAuthorship" (which can go in verbatimScientificName),
or they do not have autonyms appropriately formatted, in which case we
can't really do anything for them.

Thus, the expected content would be:
verbatimScientificName: Lobelia spicata Lam. var. spicata
scientificName: Lobelia spicata var. spicata
scientificNameAuthorship: Lam.

> I understand this is tough on Zoologists :-), but I therefore propose

Actually, it's the botanists who are making things tough in this case...
:-)

> verbatimScientificName
> scientificName
> scientificNameAuthorship,
> scientificNameWithAuthorship
> 
> This covers all cases in my opinion. The comments should express, that

> scientificNameWithAuthorship should follow allow canonical name rules 
> and recommendations of the respective Code.

I'm still not convinced we need scientificNameWithAuthorship.

Aloha,
Rich


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