[tdwg-content] [tdwg-tag] Inclusion of authorship in DwCscientificName: good or bad?

[Richard Pyle]

> I just had a quick look at the first few thousand data 
> records coming into OBIS for my region (Australia). Just 
> about every supplier who includes authority as 
> dwc:scientificNameAuthor has used dwc:scientificName 
> "incorrectly" i.e., for the canonical name not the canonical 
> name + author. This data then flows into GBIF, ALA, etc. and 
> circulates in this form. So "users" are already ignoring the 
> definition of dwc:scientificName in practice, it would seem, 
> with no apparent ill effects (?) - not sure whether this is 
> good or bad, hence the title of my original question which 
> prompted this thread...

OK, so here's the question:

Is it more disruptive to re-define dwc:scientificName to explicitly exclude
authorship?

Or, is it more disruptive to leave the existing (loose) definition of
scientificName intact, and create more term(s) with more precise meanings,
which we feel can help facilitate sharing of infomration?

Rich