[Taxacom] Scientific name vs Scientific name string

[Richard Pyle]

> However, I can't see such  convincing 
> progress in contents of databases, - namely progress 
> concerning the central issue of taxonomic names in the major 
> name aggregators! Don't you all think we are running into 
> serious trouble with that massive load of unresolved 
> misspellings, homonyms, phantom names out there??...

This is exactly what the Global Names Architecture is striving for.

See:
http://globalnames.org/ 
http://code.google.com/p/taxon-name-processing/
http://www.tdwg.org/fileadmin/2009conference/slides/Remsen_GNA.ppt
http://www.tdwg.org/fileadmin/2009conference/slides/Pyle_GNA.ppt

> Yes, the "protonym" idea is flawed because of homonyms

Huh?

See:
http://systbio.org/files/phyloinformatics/1.pdf

> Such unique name anchor strings could be stored and resolved 
> with additional information (author, date, publication, type 
> material, etc.) in a central place, ideally in an 
> authoritative ZooBank for zoological names, etc. In this way, 
> it could become the complete inventary of all available 
> names, - something that all other players can rely upon.
> That is, of course, nothing but a vague idea and a little 
> experiment at this moment, - but maybe worth half a cent... 
> (I can show more examples to colleagues who might be interested).

What you describe is encompassed by the goals of GNA, which includes the
text-string part (Global Names Index; GNI), and the "cleaned" robust index
(Global Names Usage Bank; GNUB).

Aloha,
Rich