[Taxacom] progress on globalnames.org

[David Patterson]

The reason for suggesting a decade or so is not because of technological
constraints. The architecture and tools are being assembled today.  Agencies
such as GBIF, EOL, nomenclators and the like can and do invest in a semantic
names architecture, and through a variety of workshops dozens of skilled
bio-informaticians have contributed their wisdom and enthusiasm.

Rather, the rate of progress to achieving a comprehensive, authoritative,
and effective names architecture is all about political will, and the social
challenges of engaging all of the key players rather than having to reinvent
wheels, and the relocation of resources to finance the transformation.  

There is no difficulty to embed, say, the names of Australia's biota within
this architecture within much less than two years, and for a very small
fraction of the $30M.  The challenge is extend this to the full spectrum of
our needs inclusive of the quality and authority we seek.

I would rather not defend the decadal statement, but my experiences over the
last 9 years suggest that this is realistic.  If we can mobilize enthusiasm,
resources to achieve a comprehensive names architecture within the next few
years, I for one would be delighted - because then we can get back to the
real biology.

Paddy

-----Original Message-----
From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
[mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Jim Croft
Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 10:17 AM
To: Roderic Page
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] progress on globalnames.org

Yesterday $30million was flagged in the Australian budget to enhance
the Atlas of Living Australia, over two (!) years.  I  would be very
surprised indeed if a major push on a list of known taxa and their
names and associated information is not going to be a major part of
this.

Decadal time scales are no really going to cut it with governments who
need something to show within a single electoral cycle.

Two years is totally scary and we are definitely going to have to look
at alternative approaches to sourcing, evaluating and capturing the
data.

jim

On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 5:04 PM, Roderic Page <r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk> wrote:
> 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
> 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
_________________
Jim Croft ~ jim.croft at gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499 ~
http://www.google.com/profiles/jim.croft

"Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality."
- Joseph Conrad, author (1857-1924)

"I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said,
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