[Taxacom] [TAXACOM] Systematists as holists

[tyler]

On Mon, Apr 07, 2008 at 07:49:56AM +1000, Bob Mesibov wrote:
> 
> Probability of success? Nil. It would be a lot smarter to liberate
> taxonomy from its institutional framework and get the bulk of its work
> done in a distributed manner by part-time, non-career taxonomists, work
> anchored by ZooBank and Doug Yanega's visionary website, and mentored
> online by the dying generation of embedded professionals.
> 
> There's nothing stopping you from helping the cause in a distributed
> taxonomic workforce.
> 
> Disclaimer: I'm biased. My digital world is Linux/FOSS-based, I work
> from home with a broadband connection and I visit museums and an SEM
> facility only when necessary.

As someone who is both a trained plant taxonomist and an occasional
contributor to Free Software projects, I think you are getting a
little carried away here. As an amateur coder I am quite competent
enough to make incremental improvements to user-space applications.
However, were kernel development left in my hands we'd all be in big
trouble. As I understand it, most of the kernel hackers are
professional software developers, and many of them are actually paid
to work on the kernel. I think it's a mistake to assume that because
the kernel is freely available, it was built entirely by unpaid
amateurs without formal training or institutional support.

In the same vein, amateur taxonomists can and do make significant
contributions to floristics and morphologically-based taxonomy. But
how many amateurs will have the opportunity to use the sort of
equipment that is required for anatomical, molecular, or other
highly-technical areas? Or to perform rigorous analysis based on any
kind of data?

It's true that a lot of what we do as taxonomists can be done by
enthusiastic amateurs in an ad-hoc fashion. But there are also areas
of taxonomy that depend on a well supported institutional
infrastructure, both in terms of access to equipment and for the
training to use that equipment.

As an afterthought, having worked with volunteers in a number of
venues, the idea of the "dying generation of embedded professionals"
spending their last years mentoring amateurs sounds like a nightmare.
The work of one dedicated, competent individual can often be far more
productive than that of a dozen individuals without the training or
time to devote to a single issue.

Cheers,

Tyler

-- 
"Windows Vista includes an array of "features" that you don't want. These 
features will make your computer less reliable and less secure... less 
stable and run slower...  And these features won't do anything useful. In 
fact, they're working against you."    --Bruce Schneier

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/02/drm_in_windows.html