[tdwg-content] Fwd: An individual identified to a higher group like Order, is still an instance of a species - just a species that is currently unspecified

[Kevin Richards]

I'm hoping the new group will be a foray into the exciting area of semantic web technologies, where we all start from a good base of having the basic technologies "accepted".

Well founded human behaviours are hard to avoid, even for the best of us.
I think all we can do (as you have done Pete) is keep persisting with our viewpoints and be a little tolerant of this well documented human (mis)behaviour, as it is obviously bound to happen again to some degree.

Looking forward to the new task group.

Kevin

From: tdwg-content-bounces at lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-content-bounces at lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Peter DeVries
Sent: Sunday, 25 September 2011 5:03 p.m.
To: tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org
Subject: [tdwg-content] Fwd: An individual identified to a higher group like Order, is still an instance of a species - just a species that is currently unspecified

Hi Steve,

Below is an example of an explanation that was later attributed to you.

There are several similar examples that I can also track down.

This is not a conspiracy but a behavior that is very common in human organizations often referred to as cliquishness. http://www.thefreedictionary.com/cliquishness

Over the years I have written emails with suggestions for the Darwin Core, yet only recently was there any mention or reference to there being a standard protocol for doing this.

And yes I did propose that we have a small group that makes up test cases etc.

While thinking about whether to attend the meeting the year I realized that there had been no real progress since last year.

Which suggests some dysfunctionality, since the public-lod list seems to be able to make real progress via their email list.

After nearly 6 years of arguing against my suggestions to adopt a more semantic approach suddenly there is consensus that this is a good idea and that we should form a group to do it?

Why isn't Bob Morris arguing against changing a standard with "millions of records", like he did with my suggestions?

Now he is an advocate for the Semantic Web?

So my question is will the new group demonstrate the same dysfunctionality as the tdwg-tag.

Since several people now seem to now accepted ideas that they previously argued against, I suspect it will also not operate in good faith and I would expect the same kind of errors, omissions and misrepresentations that were seen in the KOS report.

- Pete



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Peter DeVries <pete.devries at gmail.com<mailto:pete.devries at gmail.com>>
Date: Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 12:07 AM
Subject: An individual identified to a higher group like Order, is still an instance of a species - just a species that is currently unspecified
To: tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org<mailto:tdwg-content at lists.tdwg.org>



What I would recommend is that you treat a specimen that is identified to an order (Perciformes) with something like the following.

Species => Order Perciformes species undetermined.

The individual is still an instance of a species, however that species has yet to be determined.

What would work best is to have some standard way of writing the green string above.

This would allow the occurrences that are of individuals identified only to the Order Perciformes, to be interpreted as a species that falls somewhere within the Order Perciformes.

- Pete


---------------------------------------------------------------
Pete DeVries
Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin - Madison
445 Russell Laboratories
1630 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706
TaxonConcept Knowledge Base<http://www.taxonconcept.org/> / GeoSpecies Knowledge Base<http://lod.geospecies.org/>
About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base<http://about.geospecies.org/>
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--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pete DeVries
Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin - Madison
445 Russell Laboratories
1630 Linden Drive
Madison, WI 53706
Email: pdevries at wisc.edu<mailto:pdevries at wisc.edu>
TaxonConcept<http://www.taxonconcept.org/>  &  GeoSpecies<http://about.geospecies.org/> Knowledge Bases
A Semantic Web, Linked Open Data<http://linkeddata.org/>  Project
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