[Taxacom] biodiversity databases

[Shorthouse, David]

Geoff,

Yes, I concede that the LifeDesks Team (and me in particular) haven't
put much effort into that thumbnail gallery of sites we host on behalf
of enthusiasts. Our energies are devoted to tool sets, which leaves
little time for advertising. In fact, that was something I whipped-up
in an hour for folks to at least get a sense that there's something
going on while the talented team worked on a scalable architecture,
the names editing environment, and connecting these to EOL just as are
AntWeb, Fishbase, and other content partners.

Now that there is actually a lot going on in many sites, it's time to
revisit. In particular, our search needs some love and attention.
Whatever we do, it will also have to ensure that embryonic sites
remain discoverable; many of the individuals behind these sites are in
the midst of soliciting assistance from other like-minded colleagues.
So, it depends on who you are as a visitor and what you think would be
wasted time. If I stumbled across an embryonic site, knew the
coordinator fairly well, I'd certainly drop him/her a line to learn of
their intentions.

Though this one isn't quite embryonic, it speaks volumes:

"This is the website, now and forever under development, for the genus
Hypogymnia. Hypogymnia is a genus of lichenized fungi. You can be just
a reader or a more active participant by adjusting the classification,
uploading images, and maintaining bibliographic resources. "
http://hypogymnia.lifedesks.org/

Cheers,

David P. Shorthouse

On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 12:33 AM, Geoff Read <gread at actrix.gen.nz> wrote:
> David,
>
> Just to be a teeny bit critical, I wonder again (as I did first time I
> looked) how does one find a speciality on your site? Shouldn't you put
> some structure into the display at  http://www.lifedesks.org/sites/ ?
> Group by phyla would be good. And if there's just a more or less empty
> shell for an item I don't really want to waste time checking it out, do I?
> Like ... Hmmm, what's this? Any good? Oh, it's only embryonic. Damn.
> (repeat ad tedium). Can these be flagged?
>
> Geoff