[Taxacom] validation of taxon names

[Curtis Clark]

On 2/19/2012 5:48 AM, Roderic Page wrote:
> I still think most of this is pretty straightforward to do. Number 3 could perhaps be best phrased as  "what name should I use?." As much as we might dislike the question (there will often be multiple possible names, and some argument about which to use), I suspect many uses don't care about these minor details, they want a name to use for their purposes. As Robert Scoble has argued in the context of buying a mobile phone, people want to make a choice that avoids making them look stupid

One way that this is commonly handled is to pick an authoritative source 
and explicitly use that, for example "Nomenclature follows Munz (1974)" 
(http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark/flora/vpcp.html). This has a downside 
if the source contains, for example, designations that are not names (in 
the ICN sense), but if your system were able to return references to 
compilations (floras, manuals, etc.) as well as taxonomic papers, the 
user could pick the one that seemed to be the right authority for their 
needs.

-- 
Curtis Clark        http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark
After 2012-01-02:
Biological Sciences                   +1 909 869 4140
Cal Poly Pomona, Pomona CA 91768