[tcs-lc] Next 4 days...

[Richard Pyle]

> yes - but only in the sense of sending officially the url for the
> wiki and updating the wiki to make it clear that we will be
> submitting the TCS for voting this year and that discussionon
> certain aspects will continue for a while yet - I still have to
> see if and when there is a final point at which it can't be changed.

O.K., thanks for clarifying. I thought you had to nail down some specific
version by March 20th, but if you can just send a URL to the Wiki (where all
the versions can be seen), then no big deal.

> I will have a last discussion session with Robert and make any
> easy changes - probably based on v0.09b will let you know but I
> wouldn't worry too much about that.

Agreed -- I thought there had to be some benchmark version submitted to TDWG
that might somehow constrain future modifications.  I gather now this is not
the case.

> yes we had agreed internally that NomenCode could substitute for
> Kingdom ages ago it just didn't get reflected in the schema.

What about its location -- as a root element of a TaxonConcept (now), as
opposed to a sub-element of Name (seems more appropriate).

> as for rank - I know there was mention recently but I didn't have
> the time to repsond then - sorry. Rank we thought was important
> for concept as well as name - i.e. it wasn't only a code thing.

Agreed -- which is why I think it belongs outside of LC.  But it is specific
to a name (in fact, to a ScientificName), so it seems like it ought to at
least move to within the Name element (but not necessarily all the way
inside NameDetailed).

> This was described to us where a taxonomist would want to share
> and record taxa that hadn't been formally names yet for whatever
> reason but they might have already decided they had a species or
> subspecies say.

I think those sorts of "pseudo-names" (e.g., "Aus nsp.1 of Pyle") ought to
exist as "name objects" within LC (RE: my previous suggestions that it
should be defined more broadly as "names intended as Linnean-style names",
rather than the more restrictive "Code-compliant names").  This needs more
discussion, but the point is, the invocation of a "Rank" immediately implies
a Linnean-style name (or are there name systems other than Linnaeus', which
incorprate the equivalent of Rank?)

> Also when watching the taxonomists at work during
> the Prometheus project, once they'd made their piles of specimens
> representing concepts they decided what rank these were and then
> as a result applied the appropriate rules for naming the concept
> at that rank based on the types - so for these reasons we
> included rank at the concept  level this along with our
> proposition that names could be represented as concepts meant we
> only needed rank to be modelled there......

Agreed -- it's a nuanced issue, and there are implied concept issues
associated with Rank.  I don't have very strong feelings about it, but do
wonder what the harmful consequences (if any) would be of moving it to
within Name, or even Name/ScientificName -- which is where it intuitively
seems to belong.

Aloha,
Rich