[Taxacom] FW: Scientific Names

[Paul van Rijckevorsel]

And a very gracious response it is.

I assume somebody is going to follow this up?
(It might be a good idea to replace this with a page that refers
the user to the well-known respectable lists?)

Paul

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mary Barkworth" <Mary.Barkworth at usu.edu>
To: <Taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
Sent: Monday, March 05, 2012 7:31 PM
Subject: [Taxacom] FW: Scientific Names


> And he did respond.
>
> From: zaphrauk at gmail.com [mailto:zaphrauk at gmail.com] On Behalf Of Owain
> Lewis
> Sent: Monday, March 05, 2012 11:29 AM
> To: rjensen at saintmarys.edu
> Cc: dyanega at ucr.edu; Mary Barkworth; nadia.talent at utoronto.ca
> Subject: Scientific Names
>
> Hi All,
>
> Thank you for taking the time to get in touch. Apologies for not replying
> to each email individually. I just wanted to address some of the points
> you raised.
>
> The website itself was just a side-project started a few years ago (I
> can't even remember why to be honest other than I had the domain name
> sitting spare). I noticed there wasn't a reliable online database for
> scientific names at the time and so created the site to fill that need. I
> don't have any knowledge of the subject matter and so the information was
> mostly pulled together from various sources. I guess I was trying to pull
> all the information I found into one central location. The project seemed
> interesting to me at the time. Clearly it was overambitious.
>
> I no longer have any real need for the site and haven't touched it for a
> long time now. I am more than happy to take the site down if you feel the
> information is misleading and unhelpful. There is no financial benefit to
> me at all. The site was built on a whim over the course of a weekend as an
> exercise more than anything else.
>
> In an ideal world I'd love to see the site developed by someone with the
> correct information as I feel it could be a really valuable resource if
> done correctly. If we were to rebuild the site now I'd suggest it would
> need an API where scientific communities could easily access the
> information for research.
>
> Clearly I naively underestimated the scope of the task (collecting all
> this information would require a significant amount of effort by more than
> one person).
>
> There are two options, I'll either take the site down completely or remove
> all the incorrect information.
>
> To be honest I have very little time available at the moment (I work full
> time as a software developer and have a busy business) and so I'll do my
> best to address this when I get some spare time.
>
> Apologies again for the inaccurate information and thanks for taking the
> time to share your concerns. I had no idea it was the source of such
> debate.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Owain
>
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>
> Owain Lewis
>
> Freelance Clojure and Ruby developer
>
> Email: owain at owainlewis.com<mailto:owain at owainlewis.com>
> Phone: +44(0) 7846 012 894
> Twitter: owainlewis
> Skype: owainlewisweb
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