Names of living things

As mentioned on the old schema.org mailing list some time ago, I
intend to do some work on the draft 'species' microformat which I
authored <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Microformats/Species>
[1] (already used by the BBC, Wikipedia and others) for the names of
living things, and to make it available also as a schema.org
extension. Clealrly, there should be a 1-1 relationship and common
terms used.

There are two issues about which I'm currently undecided:

* Should there continue to be one top-level property, currently
"biota", or one for each kingdom ("plant", "animal", "fungus"
"bacterium", "virus" - note that these are not always clear-cut
distinctions: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incertae_sedis>;
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_(biology)>)

* Should the properties continue to use English names such as
"kingdom", "order", "family" etc,  or latin "regnum", "ordo",
"familia"?

Though I do tend strongly towards not changing things for the sake of
it, I'm open to cogent arguments for doing so.

Then there are some proposed areas which have not yet been developed,
or not deployed, such as hybrids and commercial cultivars, GUIDs,
authority, etc.

Does anyone have any views? Is there any similar work underway elsewhere?

I intend to canvass views, elsewhere, from taxonomists and other
biologists, whose buy-in I see as essential.


[1] See also earlier work at
<http://microformats.org/wiki/species-strawman-01>, although that page
is no longer maintained; and uses the top-level of "species", which
was deprecated in favour of "biota".

-- 
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk

Received on Saturday, 29 October 2011 20:46:51 UTC