[Taxacom] progress on globalnames.org

Wed May 13 21:21:26 CDT 2009

While point 1 may be a huge job and point 2 may be a major peeve, it
is point 3 that is a show stopper.

What appears 'central' and relevant to one person appears 'somewhere
else' to another.   And if it 'appears' to be somewhere else,
ownership and engagement is tenuous and it is very difficult for
people to maintain interest in working with it.  Closely related to
the 'not invented here' syndrome and the repetitive development of
your point 2.

I am hopeful, and I hope not in vain, that enthusiastic linked data
technologists can give us a solution(s) that provide(s) seamless
access and interoperability between numerous domain-centric datasets
(where domains can be quite narrow), applications and projects each
doing the same thing in the same way using the same standards.

I am not convinced that a 'do it here or else' approach will work and
be sustainable in biology, but 'do it this way or else' might.  Having
said that, GenBank seems to work, sort of, as does Wikipedia, sort of.
 Big investments and big egos generally do not let go or give in
easily, and having been stranded before, little players are wary of
big brother promises of 'trust me, we will look after you'.  The
community is key in this - if a community is strong, vibrant and
cohesive it can and will look after its own stuff.  The challenge is
to get them to do it in a way so that it can link to and interact with
other communities' stuff.

But yes, if there is going to be a train wreck, it will be sociology
at the cause, not the science and not the technology.

The first step lies in the standards... TDWG is your friend...  :)
-
jim

On Thu, May 14, 2009 at 10:58 AM, Dean Pentcheff <pentcheff at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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>>
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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