[Taxacom] iSpecies

[Stephen Thorpe]

Rod Page said: 4) Tools for annotating data don’t solve the issue of will anybody take the annotations and fix the problem.

Me says: Probably not, but the annotation itself significantly mitigates the problem, at least for cases where humans are reading the information. Without the annotation, they will be unaware of the problem. The annotation makes them aware of the problem, and may often tell them what the correct version should be. Whether or not the problem should be edited out is a contentious one. We should be thinking of citable presented information in terms of historical documents whose content does not change. If a mistake has been made, then a new document should be created to point out that mistake. The original version (with mistake included) should be archived, so that if anyone did cite it, they can recall it as it was when they cited it. Otherwise you can't tell who made the mistake, the source or the person citing it!

Stephen