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

[groscurt]

I never disagreed that the description is in moby basically the only source
of the meaning.

I just complaint about the way it is used and how people can describe things
- that free text is 'not an optimal way to do'... 

so imo this discussion leads the wrong way here. I totally agree with you
Pieter - I just say with the current situation its not how it should be...

BYGONES.

Fact is - the description is not changeable currently in an easy way so my
suggestion is not doable. End

Cheers
Andreas

----------------original message-----------------
From: "Pieter Neerincx" 
To: "Core developer announcements" moby-dev at lists.open-bio.org
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2009 23:47:45 +0100
-------------------------------------------------
> 
> On 27 Jan 2009, at 16:07, Paul Gordon wrote:
> 
>> But in Moby, the description is what tells you the meaning.  The  
>> user will infer the appropriateness of using a term based on that  
>> free text.  Whether that inference is reasonable or not depends on  
>> the user and the person who created the term.  I didn't say that the  
>> description is necessarily *correct* or precise, but that it *is*  
>> the usage contract in Moby.
> 
> Yep, I totally agree. The description is what gives you the meaning,  
> especially for the primitives: String, DateTime, Float, Integer and  
> Boolean. The fact that something is a string is not extremely  
> informative. So we add an articleName attribute. Let's say I use a  
> String primitive to store the name of a species. So now we have  
> <String articleName='species'> ... </String>. That still doesn't tell  
> me if I should use the systematical Latin name like for example Homo  
> sapiens or the common name like human and in the case of a common name  
> it doesn't have to be in English anyway, there could be case  
> sensitivity issues, etc.... So there are a million ways to use this  
> object. If this object was designed properly the description will take  
> any confusion away and make it 100% clear what grammar to use for the  
> species names. If the description doesn't specify it you'll end up  
> trying to find out how the service works by painstaking trial and  
> error. Note that the namespaces are not helping here as they cover  
> only the context of the id attributes, but not the CDATA content of  
> primitives nor the context of the element names.
> 
> It's virtually impossible for BioMoby Central to figure out if you are  
> only trying to correct a typo / add a more meaningful description or  
> whether you are changing the meaning. The only way to make a shortcut  
> as compared to taking "the long way" to update an object with many  
> dependencies is if it's changed/hacked by someone with "raw" access to  
> the SQL database, which basically means we got back to whether or not  
> to curate Moby Central...
> 
> 
>> Andreas Groscurth wrote:
>>> 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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>>>
>>>
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> 
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