Re: Proposal: Organization dissolutionDate

Thad: Oops, should have looked up the definition of defunct. But as you wrote, "defunctDate" is not a desirable term. It's not traditionally used by corporate registries to describe the status of a company either, in my experience. Mauritius and Thailand use it. Most other parts of the world use "dissolved", "terminated" or more niche terms like "revoked", "cancelled", etc.

> In general, I think we should strive to use *the same* name for properties that represent the same meaning, even for very different types, so e.g. the properties validFrom and validThrough could be used for a broader set of types, if it is feasible to find a common textual definition for all usages.

Martin: validFrom and validThrough may work for an organization that has a legal registration. However, the validity usually refers to the organization's registration, not to the organization itself. Organizations are not only formal, legal, registered entities but also informal entities like, for example, a drama club at an elementary school.

In any case, Organization already has a foundingDate property. It would be inconsistent to have foundingDate and validThrough as the pair of properties to describe the beginning and end of the organization. If we wanted to use validThrough, we should remove foundingDate and add validFrom. However, that is unlikely to happen given that foundingDate has been published and adopted.

James

On 2013-08-28, at 10:00 AM, Thad Guidry wrote:

> 
> On Wed, Aug 28, 2013 at 8:35 AM, James McKinney <james@opennorth.ca> wrote:
> Thad: I don't understand. I am proposing a term that should imply the dissolving of an organization, therefore dissolutionDate is appropriate.
> 
> An organization can continue to exist despite being defunct. I am proposing a property that describes the date on which the organization ceases to exist - like deathDate for a Person.
> 
> 
> defunct "means" no longer existing.  That is also the use in Freebase as well.  We use the "Defunct Organization" Type in Freebase on any Organization that has "died" or "no longer exists".
> When an Organization is defuct it is not continuing to exist.  If you think otherwise, please give an example of the "resurrection". :-)
>  
> If we were to use a term with the word "end" in it, it would probably be "endDate", but that is already used by Event http://schema.org/Event To avoid confusion, I think a more distinct term should be used in this case. 
> 
> However you wish to swing it.  Just giving you a further idea of making it more generic.
>  
> -- 
> -Thad
> Thad on Freebase.com
> Thad on LinkedIn

Received on Wednesday, 28 August 2013 15:54:15 UTC