Include govtrack id in committee memberships

[GPHemsley]

Committee memberships have bioguide and thomas IDs associated with them, as does social media. But social media also has govtrack IDs. It would be helpful to me if committee memberships also had govtrack IDs, so that I didn't have to load in the whole legislators file just to get the proper IDs.

[JoshData]

I'm obviously OK with that. I think I had it that way originally and Eric removed it. :) Right now I think we should minimize data changes, and since I know you're doing this specifically for me to generate legacy GovTrack XML, I think I can just say let's deal with the YAML as-is on this one.

Also, you can use this: https://github.com/unitedstates/congress/blob/master/tasks/utils.py#L389

Presuming Eric's opinion, I'm closing the issue. :)

[GPHemsley]

Well, then can we agree on which ID is the canonical one, then? It seems kinda silly to continue to have a hundred different IDs for one person. Which one is the "unitedstates" ID?

[konklone]

We all tend to treat and recommend the Bioguide ID as one. The THOMAS IDs
are also official, but only cover members of Congress back to the dawn of
THOMAS.gov. Now that THOMAS.gov is becoming Congress.gov and a proper
website, the ID is becoming more relevant, but - until it has the breadth
of coverage as the Bioguide ID, that's the one to call the canonical one.

Josh presumed my opinion correctly, though it's nothing against any of the
IDs in particular - my feeling was that since we don't want to duplicate
the entire ID crosswalk on every entry in every other file we create (like
social-media.yaml) that links to the main set, that we should limit it to
"official IDs only", and bioguide and THOMAS both meet that. LIS would
also, but it seems not that useful since it only applies to Senators.

I'm about to work on a major update to the legislators-social-media.yaml
file, with a sweep of updates. I may take the opportunity to remove the
govtrack ID from that file (leaving bioguide and THOMAS), for the same
reason, unless there's an objection.

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 1:45 PM, Gordon P. Hemsley
notifications@github.comwrote:

Well, then can we agree on which ID is the canonical one, then? It seems
kinda silly to continue to have a hundred different IDs for one person.
Which one is the "unitedstates" ID?

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