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hiscom / hispid

HISPID Terms
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Use of 'collection object' in definitions #127

Open acvaughan opened 7 years ago

acvaughan commented 7 years ago

There are a lot of references to 'collection object' in the definitions. I think it's confusing to use terminology that doesn't correspond to a HISPID term. Can we change these to 'preservedSpecimen' and note in preservedSpecimen that it corresponds to what is often referred to as a 'collection object'?

acvaughan commented 7 years ago

Perhaps also change the 'specimen' references to 'preservedSpecimen' as well, e.g. 'List of preparations from a specimen'.

It would probably mean we'd have to change 'A description of the habit or life form of the specimen on which the collection object is based' (lifeForm) to 'A description of the habit or life form of the organism that forms the basis of the preservedSpecimen', but I think 'organism' is better than 'specimen' here, regardless.

acvaughan commented 7 years ago

Now I'm not sure about this. I still think it's best to reference other terms/properties to avoid ambiguity in what we're talking about. But specimen vs preservedSpecimen is tricky for properties that can or do relate to the specimen before it's probably been preserved, e.g. locality: currently "Description of the locality from where the specimen was collected" (let's delete "from") - my earlier suggestion of changing this to "Description of the locality where the preservedSpecimen was collected" doesn't make logical sense.

acvaughan commented 7 years ago

I'm starting to think that "collection object" is the best to use (from a conceptual point of view), but perhaps we include a note on terminology of definitions and usage notes in the introduction?

nielsklazenga commented 7 years ago

I think collection object has the same issues as preservedSpecimen, perhaps even more so. They are both too specific and hence become inaccurate when taken outside the herbarium. A general term like 'specimen' might be vague, but that is not always a bad thing.

nielsklazenga commented 7 years ago

I think this is partly covered in issue #129, not only because the example is from a property in the Location class. So, following Ben's suggestion there, use PreservedSpecimen (it starts with a capital, because it is a class) when talking about the class. Total avoidance would still be better of course. Elsewhere, 'specimen' is probably best. I think we use the word to much though. We could use 'collecting event' every now and then when appropriate.

acvaughan commented 7 years ago

Sounds like a good approach to me.