[Taxacom] Google, Wikipedia, and EOL

[Andy Mabbett]

In message 
<C2994967ABB5D54BB013821E4ABA60E1032889A40E at exvic-mbx03.nexus.csiro.au>, 
Tony.Rees at csiro.au writes

>More impressive again (from a taxonomic viewpoint) is the entry at 
>genus level, with the extensive synonymies for genera and species, at 
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danaus_(genus) . However this does raise a 
>few relevant questions, including:
>
>- most of the latter content is stated to be sourced from another site, 
>Nymphalidae.net, presumably via extensive manual re-working either 
>re-keying, copy-and-paste, or a combination of the two)

Or, quite probably, by a bot - a script, operated by a human, but 
automating the process. If you ask on the article's "talk" page, I'm 
sure whoever did it will tell you how.

>- a lot of the latter should arguably be placed on the individual 
>species pages, not on the genus page, or replicated automatically there 
>(which is doubtless not possible owing to the limitations of the free 
>text nature of the content)

Perfectly possible.

>- if the higher taxonomy of Danaus is changed, a lot of flow-on manual 
>wiork is currently required to propagate those changes to relevant 
>child taxa (and there is no guarantee that they will be in synch until 
>fixed, if ever).

Again, a bot could do most of this.

-- 
Andy Mabbett