[tcs-lc] Let's not bother with the codes any more :)

[Kennedy, Jessie]

Roger wrote: 

>
>In 2008 FoxNature the natural history publishing wing of a multimedia 
>conglomerate publish a book called "Plants and Animals of the 
>World". It 
>is really pretty good in parts. Lots of pictures but they only use 
>vernacular names, some of which they have made up. FoxNature 
>want their 
>book to be widely used so they register all the concepts they 
>use in the 
>book, print the LSIDs in the book, put it on the web and give away a 
>million copies to educational institutions.
>
I think we already have many virtual FoxNatures out there - this is today - I've seen loads of www sites that look like this (maybe not all with LSIDs but their own version of) sometimes the names "look" like scientific names sometimes not....

>Loads of people start using the book to record data and 
>submitting it to 
>the global system.
>

this has been happening for ages - people are generating data sets recording observations with names that are ambiguous and expecting people globally to use them.....

>The penny drops that because we have a new global system for referring 
>to concepts there is no longer a need to use Latin names. The 
>breaks are 
>off and we decide the trust worthiness of a concept on the basis of an 
>amazon.com like review process or brand. No one turns up for the 2010 
>International Botanical Congress - after all what role is 
>there for the 
>nomenclatural codes in a concept based world?

well there I was thinking that concepts actually gave meaning to names that were controlled by the codes and therefore were stricter in some way.... think I've just been transported to Wonderland ;-)
>
>This is a bit of fun. Clearly it wouldn't happen because we 
>would have a 
>system to ensure that people linked concepts to other concepts 
>that were 
>'Original Concepts' that contained a type specimen. We are doing this 
>aren't we?! All concepts must point to Original Concepts 
>unless you are 
>an Original Concept. Can some one work out how to do that conditional 
>bit in the schema :)

The TCS - for right or wrong is not a schema than enforces anything much - because when we talked to all of you guys you were all of a different view of as to what was really required when talking about concepts. So most of the elements are optional so you can use it the way you want to, to describe concepts how *you* do it, but in a framework comparable to others. Now of course that does cause potential problems and I have no doubt that people will pick and choose whose data to use based on some view on the "quality" of someone's work (maybe the pretty pictures will win at the end of the day!) and that may be based on the inclusion or not of certain elements in the TCS. But that's up to the system that manages the data or the people who accept data from others to decide - not up to the schema for exchange - unless we're saying the TCS has to control what's an allowable concept.

Now you are probably saying but we have the codes which control what's an allowable name - so are we only going to pass code validated names and anything else is untransferable?

>
>The fact that we appear to have over looked this (I may be wrong but I 
>can't see the mechanism in the TCS and I haven't had a chance to check 
>your schema thoroughly Rich I am afraid) worries me. There have been a 
>lot of us looking at this for a while now. Are we loosing track of why 
>the codes came about in the first place and why they are 
>separate in the 
>real world and hence why it might be a good idea to model them 
>separately in the virtual world?

I would expect places like IPNI to implement in their system all the rules of the codes for checking their names as I see this as their primary responsibility - I didn't think this had to be captured in the schema. As long as IPNI can pass the names (and whatever else anyone wants associated with the original name) then I don't see the need for rules - unless we're all going to be trying to do IPNI's job. I'd rather see more support for some places to sort out the data that others can then use, rather than everyone trying to do the same to their "version" of the data.  
>
>I am just trying to come at this from some other angles here.
>
we were too when we started out on TCS....hope you're more successful which if you focus on one particular user group I'm sure you will be. 

Jessie
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