[Taxacom] New Algospongia treatment in IRMNG, plus Wikipedia page

[Tony Rees]

Following on from my message above, of course it is fair to ask, why is it
- if not necessary, then at least a "good thing" - to enter/update this
information in two different places (IRMNG and Wikipedia). Basically there
are differences in the aims and aspiration, target user base, also in the
manner by which information can be extracted, for both systems. IRMNG is
specifically a "taxonomic information system" and aspires to be complete at
the genus level, although with some latency (e.g. many animal names
published post-2014 are not yet included), so if you look up "any" genus
name you should find it, with associated authorship, taxonomic placement,
etc. Wikipedia lags quite a lot in completeness in this area, as evidenced
by the number of red links (virtually all!) to listed genus names on the
"Algospongia" page, meaning entries (articles) for those items do not
currently exist (creation is at the whim of Wikipedia contributors, who are
basically an uncontrolled set of individuals). On the other hand, Wikipedia
is a first "port of call" for non-specialists (including myself for many
groups) wishing to obtain entry-level information about a taxon, links to
relevant literature, and in some cases more discussion of "tricky"
taxonomic or nomenclatural issues (as in this case) than is possible in the
IRMNG format.

An additional difference is that IRMNG was designed from the ground up to
be machine- as well as human- readable, in the sense that taxonomic
information from IRMNG can be extracted as data items suitable for
ingestion into other systems (think Catalogue of Life, GBIF, etc. etc.) as
well as answer automated queries such as is this taxon marine, or extinct,
or correctly spelled, (etc.), how many taxa are in this group, as per the
aptly named "Taxonomic Name Resolution Service" for plants set up by Brad
Boyle and others (myself included), see

Boyle, B., Hopkins, N., Lu, Z., Garay, J. A. R., Mozzherin, D., Rees, T.,
Matasci, N., Narro, M. L., Piel, W. H., McKay, S. J., Lowry, S., Freeland,
C., Peet, R. K., & Enquist, B. J. (2013). The taxonomic name resolution
service: an online tool for automated standardization of plant names. BMC
Bioinformatics, 14(1), 16. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2105-14-16

Such functionality is not readily available from Wikipedia, although - at
some future time - its companion "Wikidata" project might support a subset
of such automated queries.

So to my mind at least, the two approaches are complementary, although of
course they are not functionally linked, and one may be out of step with
the other at any particular time (information in either - or both - may or
may not have been updated, or either one (or even both) can contain errors.

Just a little philosophising on "why we do what we do" I guess, for a
Friday morning (Australian time!)

Regards - Tony


On Thu, 2 Sept 2021 at 16:00, Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Taxacomers,
>
> Those following my most recent couple of posts/threads to Taxacom may have
> noted that I have been working on the fossil group "Algospongia",
> principally for updating relevant genus-level records in IRMNG, which
> previous resided (unreviewed) all over the place e.g. as sponges, algae,
> foraminifera, problematica, etc. With the assistance of the 2010
> publication by Vachard & Cózar I have been able to sort all of these out
> (plus a few more), also deal with a few errors and inconsistencies in that
> publication, to the effect that I now have a classification (within the
> group as "Algae incertae sedis") that I am happy with in IRMNG, see e.g.
> https://www.irmng.org/aphia.php?p=taxdetails&id=1559 . In order to
> produce this I needed to do a fair amount of background reading and come to
> some editorial opinions, which I have decided to present to interested
> persons in a human-readable form at a newly created Wikipedia page for
> Algospongia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algospongia . That page
> attempts to navigate a number of nomenclatural and taxonomic issues and
> present the situation as it appears to me, September 2021, and can be
> updated further (as indeed can the representation in IRMNG) as new
> information comes to hand, or corrections are needed.
>
> Please feel free to take a look if interested, and I am more than happy to
> receive relevant feedback on any issues or statements therein. As a
> stranger to this particular taxonomic group, I approached this project
> similar to an "undergraduate essay topic" wherein I have tried to
> synthesise available information, some of it internally contradictory, into
> a coherent whole, for the benefit of reference for my future self if no-one
> else!
>
> Regards to all - Tony
>
> Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia
> https://about.me/TonyRees
> www.irmng
>