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

[Paul van Rijckevorsel]

From: "Roderic Page" <r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk>
Sent: Saturday, May 09, 2009 9:35 AM
> 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.

***
On and off, I have been thinking about this, as well as about the "Species
Pages" of Roger Hyam (February 23, 2009 12:44 AM). I do see a dichotomy,
between websites with a limited objective (bottom up, driven by information)
and sites trying to do 'everything' (top down, driven by a desire for
information). There is ever more available on the web, more scanned
literature, more useful information on species (including pictures), and
more and more databases (and databases that harvest other databases). The
actual information on species is usually not in the form of a Species Page,
and it certainly is no rarity to need five or more sources to gather
anything like a complete whole.

A lot of databases appear to have no function other than to clutter up
Google searches by having their empty pages show up higher than pages that
do offer content. Whether adding (yet another) a wiki would be useful is
debatable (wasn't EoL a wiki? It does not appear to be moving forward all
that fast). I am quite dubious about the "Anybody can figure out that frogs
don't live in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean." as negatives generally are
not particular useful. Noticing an error or potential error is not
necessarily useful; it is fixing them (properly) that matters; that usually
takes a great deal more work (and skill and knowledge).

Paul