[tcs-lc] Mispelling db response

[Paul Kirk]

Roger,
 
One persons wrongly spelt name is another person correctly spelt name. All names (in the real world) must be in some sort of context. Your 3) below is the ideal solutions - I do not like 1) because other things being equal I do not like 'notes'.
 
So here is a real example:
 
The first link is to a species from the British Fungi web site which has a link to the UK Biodiversity Action Plan web site (the second link below)
 
http://194.203.77.76/fieldmycology/GBCHKLST/gbsyns.asp?intGBNum=3012 <http://194.203.77.76/fieldmycology/GBCHKLST/gbsyns.asp?intGBNum=3012> 
 
http://www.ukbap.org.uk/ukplans.aspx?ID=136
 
Note the different spellings (yes, I know, they could correctly be regarded as orthographic variants but when does an orthographic variant become a mispelling).
 
So, If you try the name from the UK BAP site on the British Fungi site you will get a 'not found' because the current database does not have this functionality (i.e. it does not keep track of orthographic variants/mispellings) - users can just put in a right hand trunctation and with a few clicks they can skip over the different spelling and get at the data they are wanting - but machines cannot do this (?).
 
Now, a similar query on the Index Fungorum web site will find the correctly spelt name:
 
http://www.speciesfungorum.org/Names/NamesRecord.asp?RecordID=159853 <http://www.speciesfungorum.org/Names/NamesRecord.asp?RecordID=159853> 
 
but here if you enter the incorrectly spelt name you will eventually get to the records for the correct name - this next link is a bit of a cludge at the moment as I cannot replicate in a real URL the functionality shown in the URL below ;-)
 
http://www.speciesfungorum.org/Names/names.asp?strGenus=Battarraea%20phalloides <http://82.43.123.182/IndexFungorum/Names/names.asp?strGenus=Battarraea%20phalloides> 
 
So, Index Fungorum will not keep track of all orthographic variant or mispellings but if the original orthography is incorrect this will be tracked and linked to the correct orthography (under the current database schema perhaps not as elegantly as possible).
 
Bottom line is, other things being equal, I do not like 'notes'.
 
Paul

________________________________

From: tcs-lc-bounces at ecoinformatics.org on behalf of Roger Hyam
Sent: Mon 02/05/2005 17:21
To: tcs-lc at ecoinformatics.org
Subject: [tcs-lc] Mispelling db response



If you were querying a db and requested a wrongly spelled name (you don't know it is wrongly spelled you are just passing a word) would you expect to get back:

1) An object for the correctly spelled name - perhaps with the misspelling as a note.
2) An object for the incorrectly spelled name with a pointer to where to get the correctly spelled object.
3) Objects for both the correctly and incorrectly spelled names and a link between them.

I think this is a matter for the db you are querying to decide not the schema. Some dbs will be capable of doing some kinds of response others capable of others. The schema is just the transport medium for this kind of thing.

Of course the db might think it is a correctly spelled name and return an object representation of it anyway.

Does this help in clarifying the debate on misspelling of names at all? i.e. which ones of them will be created as objects and which will be notes etc.

Roger



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