[Taxacom] ICZN and Wikispecies (was Re: "nude" Coccinellid genera?)

[Doug Yanega]

Jason Mate wrote:

>Maybe once ICZN has solved its current financial crisis there could be
>a move towards merging it with Wikispecies and creating an online,
>gold-standard
>database accesible for a small (say 20 Euros a head) donation every 
>year towards
>financing the work? Maintaning the infrastructure and curating it
>costs time and money so users need to chip in instead of complaining
>about the quality of, admitedly pretty poor, free stuff. The current
>data dumping is hardly helping and feels
>more like the tragedy of the commons.

Speaking as a Commissioner, I can confidently say this could never 
happen, for one very obvious reason: the ICZN deals only with 
nomenclature, not taxonomy, and Wikispecies deals with taxonomy. That 
is why the ICZN is working to develop ZooBank, which *is* intended to 
be a registry for nomenclatural acts. I agree wholeheartedly that the 
need for a single standardized classificaion exists, but that's way, 
way outside the ICZN's jurisdiction. Another obvious issue is that 
Wikispecies covers all taxa, not just zoology - and the idea of a 
single nomenclatural Code to govern all taxa does not appear to have 
a lot of public support.

Sincerely,
-- 

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314        skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82