[Taxacom] progress on globalnames.org

[Tony.Rees at csiro.au]

Rod Page wrote:

>> Am I the only horrified by this timescale?

Dear Rod, all,

I'm not too keen on the timescale either - that's why I built my own :-)

http://www.cmar.csiro.au/datacentre/irmng/

Of course this is a database approach not a wiki, but I would argue that a database approach is actually the only way to go so as to re-use data entered at higher taxonomic levels at the levels below, and also impose the necessary rigour (as well as searchability and ease of scrutiny/maintenance of the entered content).

WoRMS have combined a database approach with distributed editing via a pool of authorised users - see http://www.marinespecies.org/about.php , which seems like a good combination to me, and better in a number of respects than a wiki (like the latter is based on unstructured text, also pages are locked to a hierarchy via the URL paths which is not so good).

Of course maintaining a system like the above comes with its own overheads - I am looking forward to GNA / ZooBank / Cat. of Life completion as much as anyone, so I can get back to doing all the other things I am actually supposed to do!

- Tony

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Roderic Page
Sent: Wednesday, 13 May 2009 5:04 PM
To: David Patterson
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] progress on globalnames.org

Am I the only horrified by this timescale?

On 12 May 2009, at 16:45, David Patterson wrote:

>
> Expectation management:  How long before this all operational? Best  
> to think
> decadally.
>

Why can't we have this sooner? Like, *cough*, now? Is it crazy to  
suggest that if all these names were dumped in a wiki, together with  
annotations (e.g., links to literature), any our community set about  
adding/annotating/cleaning, we could have this done rather sooner...?

Rod



---------------------------------------------------------
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
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Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html







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