An exemplar shows the shape a record takes

Answers Metaphysics · Identity

A source-backed kind admits records: rows that name the durable source they came from. Before any record exists the kind still has a shape, and one canonical representative can show it. That representative is an exemplar. SKOS treats an example as a note about a concept, not a fact about the world, and the exemplar is read the same way: it documents the pattern, carries no source reference and never pretends to one. A record carries a source reference and is never an exemplar; a vocabulary term is neither, because it already is the pattern. Each registry states once how an exemplar and a record are each named, so the exemplar's label is the naming convention made visible.

What goes wrong without it

A model with no instances cannot be evaluated, and a model with invented instances cannot be trusted. Treating an example as documentation of a concept rather than an assertion about the world resolves the bind: one marked exemplar shows what a record of the kind looks like, while the claim that any such record exists stays unmade.

What proves it — 1

Each is a gate the build runs: a check inside a ring, a whole ring, or an eval beside them. A build stops at the first that refuses.

• registry integrityexemplar admission
  A source-backed row is a record with a durable source reference or an exemplar of the pattern, never both and never neither; a vocabulary term is never an exemplar; and every exemplar answers to the name the exemplar commitment gives it, so renaming one cannot strand the sentence that threads them.

Derived from — 2

• W3CSKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference
• Thomas R. GruberToward Principles for the Design of Ontologies Used for Knowledge Sharing

Kinds it licenses

Where this model stands

Twelve kinds hold one exemplar each, threaded as one retention thread: a Retention campaign, its Win-back email, its Send email, the Campaign flight, the Market, the Lapsed customers, the Email frequency preference, the Email marketing consent basis, the Percentage discount, the Hero image, the Reactivation rate formula and the Reactivation rate target the campaign pursues. Time Windows holds one exemplar per shape a window takes: the Campaign flight, bounded by dates, and the four windows the journeys count inactivity over, bounded by a duration and a clock - the Evaluation window, the Activation window, the Lapse window and the Advocacy window.

An exemplar carries no source reference, a source-backed row is a record or an exemplar, and a vocabulary term is neither. Each exemplar is marked as such wherever it is read.

What it does not claim

No record is admitted yet. The first record in any kind stands beside its exemplar, and the exemplar remains as the pattern.

RUL-019