[SEEK-Taxon] guids

[Richard Pyle]

Hi Nico,

Many thanks for the thoughtful response!

>     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.

I guess what I meant by "new" and "different", was the implied scope of
organisms that would be included within a given concept.  A simple datestap
would not affect the implied scope of organisms included within the concept.
If the added-on information you allude to changes the scope of organisms
that would be included within the concept, then it seems to me that a new
concept should be defined.  If the added-on information only clarifies the
boundaries of what is the same scope of organism, then it seems to me to
simply be a reference back to the original concept (not a new "version" of
the concept).

>     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.

Yes, but does the alteration/correction of what really amounts to metadata
for the concept really require that a new ID be issued (in this case, a new
ID assigned to a different version of the same concept)?  It seems to me
that the whole purpose of creating a GUID for concepts is to avoid the need
to track such trivial changes in metadata.  For example, if my dataset
pointed to an LSID to indicate a particular concept, it wouldn't matter
whether the author of a species epithet used to represent that concept was
spelled "Lacepede", "Lacepede", or "Lacepede" (unless that name was embedded
as part of the GUID -- which is an entirely different topic of discussion).

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the purpose of the GUID as used for taxonomic
concepts?

> 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.

I guess my question is:  are the sorts of metadata details at risk of
needing correction (spelling errors, typos, etc.) the kinds of thing that
need to be tracked via the GUID itself?  In my mind, the GUID would
represent a conceptual scope of organisms (i.e., circumscription); and
therefore if the scope of organisms does not change, then no additional GUID
is needed to represent a new "version" of the same concept (which is
different from the situation where two separately-defined concepts may be
deemed to be congruent).

> 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.

O.K., if "version" simply means the correction of inadvertent,
objectively-discernable errors in metadata, then my feeling is that there is
really no need to track such metadata corrections within the body of the
GUID itself.  In the case you mention of a "potentially" different concept,
then clearly this is a case of a separate concept GUID, which may or may not
be secondarily mapped as "congruent" with the original GUID.

>     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.

In summary, I guess my point is that, in my mind at least, the whole purpose
of the GUID is to get away from having to track the mechanical,
string-transporting issues and allow focus specifically on the
circumscription (taxonomic) issues. Let the metadata be tied to the GUID at
the central registry, and corrected as needed.  There's no harm in
preserving a log of all changes to metadata, but I don't see why such
changes would cause the need for the generation of new GUIDs (in the form of
a new "version" of the same concept).

Again -- it's very possible that I'm missing something here.  But it just
seems to me that if you're going to go to all the trouble to establish a
GUID system, then the advantages of doing so (which, in my view, includes
the alleviation of the need for everyone to indepentently keep track of
various versions of metadata tied to each concept) should be maximized.

I'm a little concerned that I may not be making my point clear here, so let
me know if anything doesn't make sense.

Aloha,
Rich

=======================================================
Richard L. Pyle, PhD
Natural Sciences Database Coordinator, Bishop Museum
1525 Bernice St., Honolulu, HI 96817
Ph: (808)848-4115, Fax: (808)847-8252
email: deepreef at bishopmuseum.org
http://www.bishopmuseum.org/bishop/HBS/pylerichard.html