[Taxacom] globalnames?

Fri Sep 18 04:13:24 CDT 2009

Hi David,

Thanks for your reply (at very least it gives me an excuse to complete my quota of 3 taxacom posts for the day - use it or lose it, as they say!)

I wish to comment openly and frankly on some of your points, but please don't take offence

>In order for this to occur, however, or for any of the other information you pointed out, to appear on a summary page, someone needs to use the network and publish those data
Hold on, the information I pointed out (and have put on Wikispecies) is all already published information. There is absolutely no reason that I can see why the GBIF page cannot have just as much info content as my Wikispecies page! It seems odd that you need to wait to be given information that is already in the public domain! Something is a bit funny, don't you think, when I, or anybody can get substantive info on to Wikispecies in a few minutes, when there is absolutely no sign whatsoever of such information appearing in GBIF? As I already stated, the info on my Wikispecies page is very "bare bones" - just a reference to the New Zealand distribution, plus citations of the most relevant published references. I'm sure I can't be the only one to get annoyed when I wade through a GBIF legal page only to find a taxon page with just a name and an "umblemished" (=no spots!) map of the world!

>This will be changing...
Yes, but when? When would the Tillyardomyia pages be populated with real data? This milennium, next milennium, ... ? Meanwhile, Wikispecies, despite it's imperfections, makes steady progress day by day ... Perhaps GBIF is the hare, and Wikispecies the tortoise ...

>But the content comes from you
Then you must make it easier to add that content if you want people to be bothered to do so! Wikimedia makes it extremely easy...

Cheers,

Stephen
signing off for today...

________________________________________
From: David Remsen (GBIF) [dremsen at gbif.org]
Sent: Friday, 18 September 2009 8:51 p.m.
To: Stephen Thorpe
Cc: David Remsen (GBIF); TAXACOM; cschwedt at gbif.org
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] globalnames?

Stephen,

The GBIF page http://data.gbif.org/species/13345061/ refers to
Tillyardomyia gracilis and the data displayed there is derived
entirely from the Catalogue of Life which in turn, received the
taxonomic and nomenclatural information from the efforts of Chris
Thompson.   No specimen point (occurrence) data comes from this
source.  It provides a taxonomic framework for informing the
organisation of the 180M occurrence records in our index.  It provides
basic taxonomic status, for some resources, synonyms.

Currently,  our network has not supported the publication and exchange
of more rich taxonomic, nomenclatural, and species-level information.
This will be changing as we have refined and expanded data standards
and our publication framework to support species-level (as opposed to
species-occurrence-level) data.   This includes the endemic status of
the taxon so that we could indicate this information on the taxon
summary page.

In order for this to occur, however, or for any of the other
information you pointed out, to appear on a summary page, someone
needs to use the network and  publish those data. The network was
built in response to countries coming together to build it yet the
resources and incentives to populate it remain elusive for many
potential users of it.  We can work to add capacity, improve
visibility, provide better tools, and identify ways to showcase
utility (of the data, not the network).   We can improve credit and
tracking of usage.   But the content comes from you.

Cheers, David

On Sep 18, 2009, at 3:52 AM, Stephen Thorpe wrote:

> Name harvesting is useful as a FIRST STEP, nothing more or less than
> an automated literature search, but not as an end in itself. It also
> would be an advance on the current "database boom", all of whom seem
> to be stealing what scanty data there is from each other. I have
> just been creating a Wikispecies page for the (officially) monotypic
> fly genus Tillyardomyia:
> http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tillyardomyia
> Although my page is still rather "bare bones", it is, I suggest,
> still a heck of a lot more substantive than what you get from the
> EoL or GBIF links that I put at the bottom of the page! These
> illustrate one of the main current problems, i.e., nice
> infrastructure, but no data! Since the genus is uncontroversially
> endemic to N.Z., you would think that the GBIF page could somehow
> indicate this in some way at this time - but no points at all
> plotted on map (as per usual), and no words "New Zealand" on the
> page at all...
> Stephen
> 2/3
>
> ________________________________________
> From: taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu [taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> ] On Behalf Of Richard Pyle [deepreef at bishopmuseum.org]
> Sent: Friday, 18 September 2009 1:23 p.m.
> To: 'Bob Mesibov'; 'TAXACOM'
> Subject: Re: [Taxacom] globalnames?
>
> Thanks, Bob -- you have indeed confirmed my inability to communicate
> on this
> issue, because you portray it as though my perspective is at odds with
> yours; whereas in fact, they seem to be quite similar -- indeed,
> nearly
> identical (unless you, too, are as bad at commicating this stuff as
> I am, in
> which case I may be misinterpreting you).
>
>> Names are not an adequate link
>> to biodiversity information. In biodiversity documentation -
>> whether species/higher taxon lists from sophisticated ecology
>> projects in 2009 or nature notes from some short-lived
>> lepidopteran newsletter of the 1930s - both scientific and
>> common names can be wrong or simply missing*.
>
> I don't believe I ever used the word "adequate".  But in the context
> of
> historical literature, what else is there?  Why else do we even put
> names on
> taxa, if not to put associated information into context?
>
>> Name harvesting from digitised literature and other sources
>> is just that, name harvesting. Harvesting the biodiversity
>> information that Rich says 'MANY MANY MANY' people want is
>> done best by human processing. Taxon specialists are the
>> people to do this, but trained librarians are nearly as good.
>> Grabbing only the biodiversity information tightly and neatly
>> linked to names not only guarantees confusion and errors, it
>> also guarantees a shallow and uninformed result.
>
> Wow!  I couldn't have said it better myself!  Indeed, it's obvious
> that I
> didn't say it better myself -- if you were left with the impression
> that I
> disagree with anything you say above.
>
>> I can hear Rich grumbling as he reads this, muttering 'But
>> name harvesting would assist taxon specialists to find
>> sources they might otherwise miss.' Maybe. But it would hide
>> those sources in a mess that I, for one, wouldn't have the
>> patience to sift through.
>
> I guess we have slightly different views here (but only slightly). I
> have
> more confidence that the good stuff can float to the top.  Google
> somehow
> manages to pull off the trick for billions and billions of web
> pages. With
> our (comparatively tiny) dataset, I imagine we could do something
> similar.
>
> And the only thing I'm grumbling about now is myself, for my evident
> ineptitude for communicating effectively on this thread.
>
>> *Yes, missing. There are many, many valuable documentations
>> of loosely categorised species ('caterpillar', 'worm'), and
>> it's often the case that only a human, reading the report or
>> studying the pictures carefully and applying prior knowledge,
>> could possibly decode just what the report is talking about.
>
> "Often" is way to soft a word here.  I'm tempted to use "Always",
> but to be
> fair, it may be most appropriate to say "Almost always".
>
> Aloha,
> Rich
> Third (and final) Post Today
>
>
>
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