[MOBY-dev] Changing only the description of an ontolgy entry

[Andreas Groscurth]

Of course the description is important for the understanding and the use 
of the datatype - but as its free text where everybody can add any 
information (and therefore also less information) i wouldnt count this 
as the *essence* of the datatype. If we would talk about a description 
ontology or other controlled vocabulary... I would agree. You could also 
say that random characters do not give an implied meaning - thats 
basically what the description is.

Just as an example what i mean (actually this shows it for the 
description of a service) - if you have a service called "runBlast"... 
the description about is "Runs a Blast".
Does this give you any implied meaning ? what version of blast, against 
what database, what blast program etc etc...

Sorry - this is a general issue ... a random user based text should not 
be seen as the essence of any element in the ontology.....

And my suggestion in the way i want to change them is basically add new 
information, being more specific or erazing typos... I know that allow 
this would also enable people to completly change the description of a 
datatype... but as we allow people already being that much I wouldnt 
dare to give this opportunity.

Cheers
Andreas

Paul Gordon wrote:
>
>> I agree here with Martin ... i dont want to change anything which 
>> will change the LSID and therefore which might change any 
>> dependencies - in my case its ONLY the description.
> I respectfully disagree: the description is the *essence* of the data 
> type.  Otherwise the data type is just a random assortment of fields 
> with no implied meaning in the real world, and therefore useless.  If 
> you change the description, you change the version, even if you think 
> its minor, others may not.
>
> I agree that you should be able to change it without deregistering 
> though, that's a major flaw...
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