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Subject and resource

Three vocabularies that must not be merged

Resource is Document 08’s term for anything with an RSM identity; Subject is RSM model vocabulary, not a synonym for every referent.

RSM ID Learning Center2 min read

Document 08 has one word for anything that can have an RSM identity: resource, meaning any distinguishable entity represented within the RSM universe. The thing an RID identifies is its referent. The wider RSM model has richer vocabulary — Subject, and semantic classes such as rsm:Person, rsm:Place, or rsm:Community — for describing what things are and how they relate. That vocabulary is description held in Semantic Spaces. It is not part of identity, and it must not be stretched into a claim that every referent is a Subject.

Three vocabularies therefore coexist and stay separate. Teaching families — people, places and living systems, instruments and materials, formations and outcomes — are groupings this Learning Center uses to explain breadth. Semantic classes are how a Semantic Space describes a referent. Registered naming kinds are the twelve values the §18.3 minimum profile allows in an RRN's kind segment. An RID encodes none of the three.

Example

Cedar Valley Growers is a community. A space may describe it as rsm:Community; this Learning Center groups it with organizations; and the kind registry has no community value yet, so no RRN is shown for it. None of that prevents it from having an RID, 451.358VPJMD1B17MKZ4 for the Growers, because an RID carries no kind. North Field is simpler: rsm:Place in description, place as a registered naming kind — two vocabularies that happen to align, not one.

A common misconception

“Every semantic class is a naming kind, and every referent is a Subject.” Semantic classes and registered kinds are maintained separately, and a class does not become a kind because it exists. Events, evidence, and knowledge artifacts may need classifications of their own; calling them all Subjects would quietly redefine the model.

A referent is what an identity identifies. The RRN is where a registered kind appears. Community is the clearest case of a class without a kind.

In the specification

Scope excludes the full ontology: Document 08 §1.3. Resource: §2.1. No type in the RID: §2.2. Kind registry: §18.3.