[tcs-lc] Re Jerry's questions....

[Kennedy, Jessie]

Hi Jerry

not sure you include me as "working on LC" but was in one meeting and have contribute do the discussion to date ...
>
>1) do you think that LC now identifies a significant proportion of
>nomenclatural elements and relationships across all codes?

this raises one of my fundamental issues about LC...
the LC you proposed was designed to be Darwin core like i.e. a flat structure where any hierarchies or relationships were designed simply as pre-determine attributes of the relation/record - hence the discussion at one point in support of LC that it would be simpler to develop software to support than say TCS which is document based and therefore potentially a bit more complex.
However form what I've seen of LC if would appear they are in fact designing a document type schema which would allow you to specify that there are relationships, say, which might have a value from a given domain of relationship types (enumerated list of types if you like) thereby allowing you to implement something with the only change begin required would be the content s of the enumerated list if people changed there minds on what was to be allowed.

So this has bothered me... as sometimes we get the simplicity argument but if it's not a flat structure I think that argument goes out the window...

Is everyone involved in LC thinking of a flat structure as per Jerry's original proposal?

>2) have you agreed a boundary for including names that lie outside the
>code, but which have a 'nomenclatural' linkage to names considered
>within the codes?

I think Nico's work here helps look a t the problems but I haven't seen any agreement on what should/shouldn't be considered

>3) is it true to say that most current LC debate is about packaging and
>not content?
>

a lot is about packaging - but the packaging seems to depend a lot on the scope of the content and this doesn't seem to be agreed across those involved 

>It seems to me that if the answer to these three questions is 'yes', or
>even 'nearly', then we have sufficient scope and quality assurance. I
>also believe, that in this group at least, we all understand the
>significant issues around taxon concepts well enough to move forward
>from the current rhetoric.

I'm not sure the answer is yes Jerry, I wish it were as I was happy to see the LC group sort out details on names but I think there is a difference between sorting out details on names in the context of a new Name element for TCS to ensure that nomenclatural information can be exchanged (possibly in the TCS) and defining an exchange schema for all nomenclatural information independently from the TCS. 
However I would love to get agreement and move forward on both.

Jessie