[Ontology-editors] haspart documentation (meeting with Chris (fwd))

[Amelia Ireland]

On Jun 16, 2009, at 7:08 AM, Chris Mungall wrote:

>
> Unfortunately, the whole 'parent/child' terminology becomes  
> confusing with has_part
> http://www.ebi.ac.uk/~aji/go/GO.ontology.relationships.shtml#haspart
>
> If we take 'child' to mean the subject of the assertion, and  
> 'parent' to mean the target/object of the assertion, then in
> 	chromosome has_part chromatin
>
> chromosome is the child and chromatin is the parent
>
> This usage is consistent with our graphical metaphors, where we  
> always have child ---> parent
>
> Of course, this conflicts with the intuition we have drummed into  
> people after 10 years, where 'child' is the smaller and 'parent' is  
> the larger.


I would argue that your average everyday mortal (e.g. me) considers  
the parent to be the broader term (closer to the root node) and the  
child to be the more specific term. If I've used the terms 'child' and  
'parent' in the opposite way somewhere, it's accidental, and due to a  
copy/paste error!

Perhaps I'll add something at the top about the nomenclature  
conventions used in these docs so it's not so confusing.

--
Amelia Ireland
GO Editorial Office
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