[SEEK-Taxon] guids

[Nico M. Franz]

Hi Rich:

    I'll jump in. You seem to be mixing up things when you say "new" and 
"different." In a shallow sense, the subsequently invoked concept is new 
just by virtue of having a different time stamp. In a deep sense, the 
added-on information may or may not represent something that the author 
"came up with" and that wasn't there before.

    But what if he or she entered a reference incorrectly as part of the 
original concept package? Surely there's a sense of "newness" here, i.e. 
the new recognition of an earlier typo. Still I'd say that's unrelated to 
taxonomy proper and would call for versioning of one and the same concept, 
even and particularly in the shallow sense. If on the other hand we have a 
statement in a different publication, at a different time, with the same or 
different circumscription content, there'd be a new (a least shallowly 
speaking) core entry in the database. That entry could be versioned too if 
it was transferred with unfortunate mistakes or incompleteness.

    The key distinction here is whether the "later recognition" to change 
something addresses taxonomic or more mechanical, string-transporting 
issues. In the later case, I believe we're tending towards versioning; in 
the former, separate concepts that should then be somehow related to each 
other.

Cheers,

Nico

At 09:02 AM 5/24/2004 -1000, Richard Pyle wrote:

>Hi Dave, [...]
>
>What is the difference between two "versions" of the same concept, vs. two
>separate concepts?
>
>In my mind, a concept is a fixed entity, that does not change over time --
>it was born with a certain scope, and maintains that scope into perpetuity.
>If the same author(s) of the original concept subsequently invoke
>essentially the same concept, but with a slight variation, my feeling is
>that it should be treated as a different concept (to whatever extent the
>slight variation is demonstrable).  In other words, if it's different enough
>that it needs to be tracked by a different version number, why isn't it
>different enough that it should be tracked as a separate concept?
>
>Maybe a specific set of examples would be helpful?
>
>Aloha,
>Rich