[Taxacom] GBIF: perpetuating probably defunct unpublished names

[Bob Mesibov]

David Remsen wrote:

"What should the practice be for someone who wants to taxonomically validate their collections data prior to publishing their data via GBIF?"

IMO a major problem is that providers haven't always *wanted* to validate. The aggregators asked for data, and the providers offered it up uncleaned. Not only taxonomically inconsistent, but spatially doubtful. I won't name names, but one provider told me 'The important thing is to get the data up and online, we can worry about cleaning it later. The [aggregator] has time and money to do this, we don't.'

Ken Walker wrote:

"I am beginning to wonder whether discrete taxon treatment websites are indeed better than those that attempt to do all."

How could it be otherwise?
-- 
Dr Robert Mesibov
Honorary Research Associate
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, and
School of Zoology, University of Tasmania
Home contact: PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316
03 64371195; 61 3 64371195
Webpage: http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/mesibov.html