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ImperialCollegeLondon / safedata_validator

Python tools to validate and publish datasets using the safedata metadata format.
https://safedata-validator.readthedocs.io/
MIT License
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Edit docs to permit non NA taxon_name in morphospecies and functional groups #77

Closed davidorme closed 9 months ago

davidorme commented 1 year ago

The docs say that NA should be used for the taxon_name field in the GBIFTaxa sheet for morphospecies and functional groups but this isn't enforced when the taxa are validated.

However it isn't clear whether this really matters? The taxa will have a unique worksheet name and be descended from a valid taxon, so this value isn't used anywhere. Other non-backbone ranks (e.g. parvorder etc) do have meaningful (if unvalidated) taxon_name values.

jacobcook1995 commented 1 year ago

Is there any checking that taxon_name matches the rank name in GBIF? I guess not because non-backbone ranks are not stored in GBIF? If there's no name validation this field will basically just be additional info, so I don't see any reason to force it to be NA really

davidorme commented 1 year ago

I agree - there are a few legacy datasets that provide that information and it is sensible information. Also the worksheet name is partly intended to act as an abbreviation. In the previous versions, the taxon_name was overwritten by the worksheet_name in the taxon index for morphospecies and functional groups but that seems like an error.

So, let's fix the docs not the behaviour.

jacobcook1995 commented 1 year ago

Great I'll add it to my docs fix list!