[Taxacom] Phylogenetic classification?

[Kenneth Kinman]

Richard Zander wrote:    
      The present Tree of Life project much in the news should actually
be named the Nested Parentheses of Life.     
------------------------------------------------
Hi Richard,
       That's a good characterization of many of their trees.  :-)              
        However, in many other cases, I find the very opposite.  They
won't commit to any real phylogenetic topology at all, and just fall
back on a rather worthless polytomy (some of them being polytomies of so
many taxa, I wonder why they bothered with a tree at all).        
       Either way, I often find their trees over-nested in some cases,
while others aren't nested at all, and either of these extremes can
frankly be disinformative or non-informative.  The frequency with which
many Tree of Life accounts are updated is also rather dismal.  :-(
       I'm sure many of the contributors are pulling their weight, and
contributing on a regular basis.  However, others are probably taking
the funding and not contributing much in return, and if the funding
agencies aren't monitoring their contributions properly, then such
"contributors" (to use the term loosely) probably aren't being prodded
into doing so.  Both over-nesting and under-nesting seem to often be
symptoms of strict cladism, although I suspect many of the under-nesters
(polytomiers) probably tend to use it as an excuse to procrastinate or
not commit to any topology at all. 
         ------Ken
P.S.  Not that the Tree of Life doesn't have a lot of valuable
information and trees.  But many of the parts that I am most interested
in are frankly overly cladistic or worthless polytomies.  When they
don't get updated for years at a time, you might as well go to Wikipedia
instead if you really want up-to-date information and literature
citations.