parentEventID vs collectingTrip

[acvaughan]

parentEventID says it "could be used for collecting trips and expeditions". Is this in conjunction with the text in collectingTrip? I think the relationship between these two terms should be elucidated in the Usage and/or Definition.

[nielsklazenga]

There is no special relationship between the two. A parent event can be anything that includes multiple other events, so it doesn't need to be a collecting trip, but it can be. It could be a survey as well, or a checklist. We have agreed to deliver the Bush Blitz expedition names as parentEventID to ALA, but this sort of specific usage information should be kept outside HISPID and rather should be in the AVH delivery information.

[acvaughan]

Thanks. I agree that special usage notes should stay out of it. But I think mentioning that parentEventID "could be used for collecting trips and expeditions" invites confusion given the presence of collectingTrip as well. If we're not going to explain how they could or could not both be used, perhaps omit the line about collecting trips and expeditions from the parentEventID usage notes?

[nielsklazenga]

It would probably have been clearer/less confusing if it had remained 'collectingTripName' (which I think I proposed initially).

parentEventID is an identifier and collectingTrip is a name. It becomes confusing when we start using names as surrogate identifiers, which we are sometimes forced to do (as in the BushBlitz case).

When I say that you can use parentEventID for collecting trips or expeditions, the collecting trip or expedition is the parent event. I don't see how that can be confusing, but it may help to change it to something like 'parent events could be collecting trips or expeditions'.

The real issue here is probably that it is not clear to everyone what an event is. If we fix that, I don't think there will be a problem understanding that a collecting trip is also an event. So I suggest a better explanation under Event, rather than one of its properties.

[acvaughan]

Sure.