[Taxacom] Rocket science, not?

[Doug Yanega]

(poking my head up cautiously, fairly certain I'm about to get it smacked...)

David Patterson wrote:

>As this recurring discussion shows, the challenges of an integrated biology
>are complex, but not - as Rod is ready to point out - unachievable.
>
>In terms of currency, EOL and GBIF established GNI - a semanticized global
>names index that is currently in soft release with a small trickle of
>content at globalnames.org.    This structure reflects the value of names to
>biodiversity information management, and to taxonomy.    If all players
>register and contribute and players 'watch', then we can achieve the
>currency that is being  sought and do so with a communal infrastructure
>rather than rely on individual projects and the vicissitudes of their
>funding.

This, more than anything else, seems to me where we face the greatest 
roadblock; getting ALL players to contribute to the development of a 
single communal resource, rather than having a cluster of individual 
projects with different goals and different contributors and 
different methodologies, all trying to figure out how to coordinate 
after-the-fact.

Look at it from the perspective of someone contributing data. If I'm 
going to sit down and spend, say, anywhere from 10 minutes to an hour 
of my time to edit (even if it's just proofreading) a record 
somewhere for a species name I happen to have the original literature 
for, then before I do so I want to know for certain that neither I 
nor anyone else will *ever* have to do this again anywhere else. If I 
submit an update (e.g., a georeferencing correction) to an online 
record for a specimen that has a unique identifying number, I want to 
know that within a very short span of time there are not going to be 
any copies of that record left online anywhere that do NOT reflect 
the update.

True efficiency is when a task only needs to be performed once, by a 
single person, and - maybe I'm missing something - I don't presently 
see any emerging plans based on achieving true efficiency.

Yes, I think developing an architecture where the communication 
between all of the relevant online resources is automatic and rapid 
is potentially achievable, but I also think that it'd be taking a far 
more difficult path than we ought to be taking. Or do the realities 
of politics and funding truly mean there is no other way?

Peace,
-- 

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314        skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82