[Taxacom] [TAXACOM] Systematists as holists

[Paul van Rijckevorsel]

From: "tyler" <tyler.smith at mail.mcgill.ca>
> 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.

***
In the field I am familiar with, this is quite true. There is a mass of
publications, but the quality work has been done by surprisingly few
individuals, belonging in only a handful of institutions. Outside those
institutions, even moderately reputable professionals can be found to make
remarkably silly errors.

However, Bob Mesibov is also right, at least in principle. On-line mentoring
can work, and Wikipedia is proof of this, within its own limitations.
Wikipedia is set up around its "five pillars" (Neutral Point of View, No
Original Research, etc) and the on-line mentoring, of any and all comers, is
focused on those. Wikipedia looks to work rather well, for topics that a
critical mass of people know about and care about, say, Buffy the Vampire
Slayer, GIMP, the F4F, the Palace of Westminister, etc. A possible boundary
stone is the USS Constitution, a topic people feel they should care about
but actually don't. If such a critical mass of people is not present,
special interests may well predominate and Wikipedia will break down.

There is no basic reason why on-line mentoring of a dispersed network of
various people for distributed taxonomy research cannot work. Dedicated
amateurs can do extremely useful work, especially where there are areas of
great natural richness, sparsely inhabited. They could well do better, and
there could be more of them, if appropriately supported in an on-line
network. However, the results will depend on a great number of conditions,
starting with the persons doing the mentoring and the special environment
set up for it. A basic requirement is to have observant and educable
participants, with some leisure, and with access to a sophisticated enough
communications network. It would help greatly if it is safe to be out in the
field, even when carrying equipment of some monetary value (no war, no
terrorists, no poachers, no muggers, etc). Probably the area with the
greatest chance of fulfilling all these conditions is Australia?

Needless to say, organizing such a project would add yet another set of
skills, for the much-besieged "embedded taxonomist" to master.

Paul