[Taxacom] RSS feeds for new (or newly digitised) names

Sat May 9 02:35:27 CDT 2009

Dear Bob,

I don't see this as a case of either/or. However, I'll make a couple  
of points.

Specialist projects are great, but that doesn't mean that they can't  
benefit from opening the data to a wider audience. Each project I've  
encountered has errors (I've found some in IPNI as a result of making  
the RSS feeds, see http://tinyurl.com/qp2yhp ), and often these errors  
are only found when one tries to integrate the project with the wider  
world.

I also agree that we need people to do the fiddly bits. One reason  
I've been playing with wikis is that in every integration project I've  
played with I keep coming across errors (from all kinds of sources,  
not just taxonomic) that need to be fixed. Some of these can be found  
by machines, but some need people to detect and correct. Note that  
these need not be specialists. Anybody can figure out that frogs don't  
live in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

I don't see a necessary conflict between specialist projects and an  
all-taxon project, but I do worry that specialist projects becoming  
silos (see http://iphylo.blogspot.com/2009/01/wikis-versus-scratchpads.html 
  , and a response http://vsmith.info/Breaking-Barriers ).

>
> It may be that having these resources makes the taxa concerned more  
> attractive for study by the next generation of taxonomists, too.  
> That would make all-taxon resources a gap-filler for those taxa  
> which haven't had the benefit of specialist TLC, but I don't see why  
> the existence of such resources would make previously unattractive  
> taxa more attractive to work on.
>

I'm not sure that having such resources will make a taxon more  
attractive to work on, but it may help. If nothing else, if somebody  
stumbles across the taxon they will have some place to get even a  
little information. I also suspect some taxa will become interesting  
by association with more "interesting" taxa (e.g., parasites).

Regards

Rod

On 9 May 2009, at 01:21, Bob Mesibov wrote:

> Rod Page wrote:
>
> "So, the real task here is to figure out how we make progress. There
> are lots of people working in this area, but I think there are
> obstacles, much of it rooted in the lack of access to data, and the
> lack of tools to fix the obvious errors.
>
> If we dumped everything we had into a wiki, and let the community
> clean/annotate/fix/add to it, I think we'd resolve a lot of these
> issues..."
>
> Are Wolfgang and Rod asking too much? The goal here seems to be an  
> all-taxon biodiversity resource for taxonomists (and some others).  
> Is the 'community' Rod refers to the world's set of taxonomists? Or  
> the subset of taxonomists worldwide, aided by very capable  
> bioninformatics specialists, who've been working so hard in recent  
> years to compile all-taxon digital resources?
>
> Meanwhile, specialist taxonomy groups have been doing their own  
> library work, compiling very complete and handy online resources for  
> their special taxa, and more such projects are in progress or  
> contemplated. These digital resources are of enormous value to the  
> specialists, but of little value to non-specialists. The  
> compilations I know about don't suffer that much from messes,  
> either: the specialists who compile them have agreed on a 'point of  
> view' with regard to uncertain names and concepts. The sifting and  
> winnowing of names and literature has been done by humans, not  
> machines.
>
> It may be that having these resources makes the taxa concerned more  
> attractive for study by the next generation of taxonomists, too.  
> That would make all-taxon resources a gap-filler for those taxa  
> which haven't had the benefit of specialist TLC, but I don't see why  
> the existence of such resources would make previously unattractive  
> taxa more attractive to work on.
>
> I guess what I'm concerned about is this: in 2009 there seem to be  
> two paths towards making taxonomic information universally and  
> conveniently avalilable. On one path there are specialists producing  
> 'authoritative', frequently updated resources for themselves and  
> their fellow workers. On the other path are all-taxon projects  
> struggling with both settled and unsettled taxonomies, with variable  
> success in keeping up to date, for a target audience of....?
>
> Vishwas Chavan is asking 'scientific institutions, multi-lateral  
> organisations, national, regional and global funding agencies,  
> academicians, and citizen scientists' to participate in a GBIF  
> Content Needs survey. Good to ask a wide range of people what they  
> want. The specialist resources seem to be satisfying the needs of  
> the specialists, though. I suppose you could argue that the all- 
> taxon resources will save specialists a lot of work in compiling  
> their own resources, but then the *specialists* will and should be  
> doing the fiddly bits, not machines.
> -- 
> Dr Robert Mesibov
> Honorary Research Associate
> Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery
> and School of Zoology, University of Tasmania
> Home contact: PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
> Ph (03) 64371195; 61 3 64371195
> Webpage: http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/mesibov.html
>

---------------------------------------------------------
Roderic Page
Professor of Taxonomy
DEEB, FBLS
Graham Kerr Building
University of Glasgow
Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK

Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
Tel: +44 141 330 4778
Fax: +44 141 330 2792
AIM: rodpage1962 at aim.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192
Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage
Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html