Taxacom: [KU SUSPECT SPAM] Re: Tropicos and gender of names

[Markku Savela]

On 08/02/2022 12:30, Rafaël Govaerts via Taxacom wrote:
> Names can indeed not be identifiers, the IT team was struggling yesterday with the identical heterotypic homonyms Peperomia dusenii C.DC. and Peperomia dusenii C.DC. ...


I disagree. At least in zoology the name combined with author works 
quite well in most* cases. The few odd balls can usually be solved  by 
adding the page number of the description (or reference) to the "key".

We really should work using the names as identifiers. It's far better 
solution than having to record  and track multiple database specific 
cryptic unique identifiers, *in addition to names*.

And when merging and comparing data from different databases, to 
actually find out which identifier in DB-1 corresponds to identifier 
DB-2, you need to use names as keys *anyway*. So, it is better to work 
towards making the names (+ author) as unique as possible.

And finally, from multiple heterotypic homonyms, at most one can be 
valid (within same code). Thus one could mark those "invalid" ones in 
databases and after that the remaining names are truly unique (within code).

regards,
-- Markku Savela