[Taxacom] progress on globalnames.org

Wed May 13 19:58:01 CDT 2009

I'm in complete agreement with Paddy on this.  (It doesn't hurt that I
visited him a couple of weeks ago...)

The technology is there or can be whipped up very quickly. Key
problems, which are social, not technical, are:

1. Getting non-electronic information electronic in a reasonably
accessible and compatible form.
2. Making taxonomists aware of the infrastructure that exists (or
nearly exists).
3. Giving taxonomists incentives to move their work to centralized
online systems.

Number (1) will happen inevitably if numbers 2-3 happen.

For number (3), the solution that we've found to work (in the decapod
/ peracarid community) is to make sure (or at least promise!) that the
services provided by an online system will be at least as useful to
the working taxonomist as whatever they are doing today. If personal
benefit comes from the investment in uploading, formatting, pushing,
tweaking, etc., then it will happen. Furthermore, then the system has
a fighting chance of staying up to date, since it becomes the
researchers' work platform rather than a one-time data dump.

Number (2) is one of my pet peeves. Actually, bigger than a peeve. The
technology is out there in multiple incarnations. It's so close we can
taste it. But if I'm sitting on a taxon list with associated
bibliographic and literature resources, there's no clear path that I
should follow today. We're all cheerily reinventing wheels and
blithely investing ourselves in initiatives that may or may not be the
ones that are well-designed and will persist.

It's time for major funding agencies and big taxonomic working groups
to start pointing some fingers. Working with us? You will put your
data over there; that's the condition of funding. If they pick systems
and initiatives that aren't initially adequate, the squalling will be
loud enough that Things Will Be Fixed.

Then we'll all be pointing at one set of resources that can be
continually improved, rather than a serially overlapping relay-race of
online taxonomic systems that arise, collect data, turn rancid, then
softly twist in the wind.

-Dean
-- 
Dean Pentcheff
pentcheff at gmail.com

On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 1:55 PM, David Patterson <dpatterson at eol.org> wrote:
> 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,
> but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant."
>  - attributed to Robert McCloskey, US State Department spokesman
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