More GBIF questions (was: ITIS)

[Meredith Lane]

Yes!!!
Meredith

Roderic Page wrote:

> Regarding the problem of authoritative lists of names, clearly our
> current lists have errors. These affect not only names, but
> classifications. By definition a classification is a tree, but the
> animal and plant classifications in ITIS are not trees (which is why
> the Glasgow Name Server only displays trees for names from NCBI). In
> the case of ITIS these errors are worrying because ITIS data are used
> in other databases, such as Species 2000, uBio, the Glasgow Name
> Server, and the SEEK project.
>
> I suspect the way forward is to adopt the tools and mindset of the Open
> Source software community. Have open databases of names that people can
> annotate (i.e., report "bugs"). The bugs themselves can be seen by (and
> commented on by) everybody. Hence, the error mentioned by Richard Petit
> (the type species of the genus Cancellaria being attributed to Pilsbry,
> 1940 instead of to Linnaeus, 1767) would be visible for all to see (and
> comment on).
>
> Regards
>
> Rod
>
> Professor Roderic D. M. Page
> Editor Elect, Systematic Biology
> DEEB, IBLS
> Graham Kerr Building
> University of Glasgow
> Glasgow G12 8QQ
> United Kingdom
>
> Tel: +44 141 330 4778
> Fax: +44 141 330 2792
> www: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html


--
Meredith A. Lane, PhD
PR & Scientific Liaison
GBIF Secretariat
Global Biodiversity Information Facility
mlane at gbif.org
www.gbif.org <http://www.gbif.org>