[Taxacom] CoL caught with its fly down!

[Stephen Thorpe]

Chris,
There is really no need to be defensive, as I was not aiming any criticism at 
Systema Dipterorum, though it turns out now that part of the problem almost 
certainly does originate there, but I need to do some more checking - the 
problem is that when you ask Syst.Dipt.  for a list of genera, the list 
itself doesn't make a distinction between valid genera and valid subgenera, 
whereas CoL at least purports to give a list of valid genera (and not 
subgenera). So, as I say, I need to do some more checking to ensure that I am 
comparing apples to apples, so to speak. As for being a "freebie", I rather 
think that you are missing the point: it may be a freebie from Systema 
Dipterorum to the world, but it certainly isn't a freebie when CoL harvests it 
and touts it as their own "peer reviewed" product derived from Syst. Dipt.! And 
then EoL harvests it from CoL, etc. 
I will get back to you when I have double checked everything...
Stephen
PS: apologies to Neal for calling him "Neale" ... I guess I shouldn't look at 
his email addy when writing his name!



________________________________
From: Chris Thompson <xelaalex at cox.net>
To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>; neale at bishopmuseum.org
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Mon, 23 May, 2011 2:54:42 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] CoL caught with its fly down!

Sorry, Stephen, but being cute and writing to Neal and the taxacomers generally 
is not helpful nor productive.

Address the producers and provide details. That way the problem may be more 
quickly resolved and the community can have better information (see *** below).

Sorry ALL, while I normally try to refrain from general criticism that is put on 
Taxacom, I feel the need to re-iterate what should be obvious to all.

Most in the online community expect everything should be free and perfect. That 
is, in this case, information about names of flies, specially horse flies, 
should be available for free and be perfect, current and without errors. BUT who 
should pay the costs of generating and serving this information?

For the last couple of years, no one has been paying much for fly names. Except 
for a small grant from the Schlinger Foundation and few bucks last year from 
Species2000, all work has been done by one retired entomologist and served 
online by Natural History Museum of Denmark as part of another entomologist’s 
research program. Less that a few thousand a year for 10% of the World's known 
biodiversity. [Remember they spend over $650 MILLION on the Census of Marine 
Life. Yes, more information but about the same number of species!]

[And I should say, while this project was started under USDA funding, they 
abandoned all funding when the economically importance fruit flies were 
completed back in late 1990s, and shortly thereafter forcing me into earlier 
retirement and abolish the research program. And, that is, the reason for the 
name change from BioSystematic Database of World Diptera to our new Systema 
Dipterorum.]

So, what does the community get from a program that runs virtually FREE?

So, yes, I messed up the data conversion and transfer from Systema Dipterorum 
last year. So, let’s check and see how “UNRELIABLE” the SD information is in the 
CoL2011 edition is.

***Your mentioned that your query was about Tabanidae, horse flies. I provided 
CoL  with the names of 4,406 valid species, of which you found problems with TWO 
(Bombylius apulus Cyrillus 1791, Dicranomyia convoluta Hancock 2006)! Yes, that 
is imperfect, but I am happy to rely on some thing that returns the right answer 
99.99% of the time. And in fact, while not shown clearly, Bombylius apulus is a 
horse fly, currently of incertis sedis status! The other is a database checking 
error (there is also a horse fly genus, Dicranomyia (that is, Hunter 1900) 
preoccupied by Stephens 1828) and when that data record was created, it was 
incorrectly assigned to family due to that preoccupied name.

As for missing “valid” genera, you provided no information, so I do not know 
whether this is due to concurrency or different classifications or what. The 
horse fly classification is now under review and we have currently a two year 
backlog on new names (that is, we estimate there are some two thousand new names 
that need to be added to the online version).

So, yes, “CoL caught with its fly down,” but it remains pretty good for a 
“FREEBIE,”

Sincerely,

Chris Thompson

retired,
from home

-----Original Message----- From: Stephen Thorpe
Sent: Saturday, May 21, 2011 9:53 PM
To: neale at bishopmuseum.org
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: [Taxacom] CoL caught with its fly down!

Hi Neale and Taxacomers,
I have just been trying to get a good list of genera for Wikispecies of the fly
family Tabanidae. I looked first at Catalogue of Life: 2011 Annual Checklist,
which attibutes its data to Systema Dipterorum, 2.0, Jan 2011
Now, I soon found the CoL list to be unreliable, missing valid genera, and
including spurious genera from other unrelated fly families (e.g. Dicranomyia
and Bombylia).
I then noted that the link that CoL gives to Systema Dipterorum leads to Systema
Dipterorum Version 1.0. Last updated: 10 August 2010, and this, as far as I can
tell, has the data all pretty much spot on correct!
So, wtf? What has gone wrong here?? One way or another, CoL has ended up with
unreliable data ...
Cheers,
Stephen
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