[Taxacom] biodiversity databases

[Stephen Thorpe]

Interesting David ... but a trifle confusing! I think we need to carefully compare and contrast your vision of EOL, with my vision of Wikispecies:

You say: Thus, four tenets are at the forefront of our thinking:
1. It's gotta be easy (we're always working on that front)
2. It's gotta give you, your team, and your institution some visibility
3. It's gotta be scholarly
4. It's gotta help with the funding impediment

Well, I can immediately tick 1 and 3 for Wikispecies, assuming that by "scholarly", you don't just mean written by aknowledged experts, but rather, something like well refenced and verifiable? Remamber that Wikispecies and (somewhat ambiguously) EOL are intended only as compilations of primary taxonomic literature, and not as vehicles for original research (so, if you can't reference it, forget it!)

As for 4, that is a strange tenet! Wikispecies helps with the "funding impediment" by being free, and therefore not chewing up funding that could otherwise be used for primary taxonomic research. How does EOL help with the funding impediment? Maybe it gives taxonomists easy money - so instead of doing the hard graft of primary taxonomy, they can instead get paid for just compiling some info for the great unwashed out there to marvel at! :)

As for 2, well, yes, I can't tick that box for Wikispecies (except that it is effectively free advertising for journals and authors of taxonomic works), but Wikispecies is more about actually just doing it (getting useful biodiversity information out into the public domain). Wikispecies should also be a handy resource for working taxonomists - they can quickly and easily check out a group, and link to relevant references, and Wikispecies will often be the first website to record newly published articles ...

So ...

Stephen


________________________________________
From: davidpshorthouse at gmail.com [davidpshorthouse at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Shorthouse, David [dshorthouse at eol.org]
Sent: Sunday, 7 February 2010 4:47 p.m.
To: David Wagner
Cc: Stephen Thorpe; taxacom
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] biodiversity databases

Folks,

It's been a while since I've said much of anything on Taxacom and I
feel compelled to finally toss in my two cents.

I am an EOL champion and have taken a very bottom-up approach to
assisting folks get their wares online. Not only am I a champion of
EOL, I am championing and developing LifeDesks,
http://www.lifedesks.org. Folks create and own their own sites,
develop their own community of contributors, and content flows out to
EOL as a byproduct of their efforts (optional). The thinking behind
the approach is modeled loosely on Scratchpads, http://scratchpads.eu
(and we are working closely with that team to share code, thus pushing
both platforms along). We were also and continue to be inspired by
Christine Hine:

Hine, C. (2008) Systematics as Cyberscience: Computers, Change and
Continuity in Science. MIT Press.

Thus, four tenets are at the forefront of our thinking:
1. It's gotta be easy (we're always working on that front)
2. It's gotta give you, your team, and your institution some visibility
3. It's gotta be scholarly
4. It's gotta help with the funding impediment

The heart of LifeDesks is a classification editor with plenty of
import and export options, plus a suite of what I think are nice
features like cut/paste/drag/drop, two-tree views to help develop a
consensus structure. Just last week, we released the option to
"publish" one's classification as a package. Because it seems the
Global Names folks are leaning toward Darwin Core Archive, we've done
the same with this classification publishing tool. However, it need
not be limited to that so we're treating this as an experiment (we can
just as easily push out Taxon Concept Schema documents and Excel
documents). As I write this, the EOL team is working on a mechanism to
ingest these classifications as alternate browsing structures.

Make your own site...check
Images...check
Species page text...check
Bulk upload species page text from Excel....check
Biblio linked to DOI....check
Everything organized in your own fluid & dynamic hierarchy....check
Linked to EOL...check
Developed using open source software with a very active community of
developers...check
Download the code, content, & database (and even delete your site if
you no longer want it!)...check
Recognition for your institution....check (e.g. see
http://eleodes.lifedesks.org)
Use them to point your funding agencies to....check

Does everything you want it to do....absolutely not (and, if it did,
we'd wind-up satisfying no one)

But...

A chance for everyone to have a say in its development...check

Cheers,

David P. Shorthouse

On Sat, Feb 6, 2010 at 9:51 PM, David Wagner <davidwagner at mac.com> wrote:
> Any EOL or GBIF champions out there care to respond?
>
> David Wagner
>
> On Feb 6, 2010, at 3:53 PM, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
>
>> Hi David,
>>
>> You ask a very good question, though one we have "touched on"
>> already several times on Taxacom. First off, I am in COMPLETE
>> AGREEMENT with you about: