Taxacom: Tropicos and gender of names

[Scott Thomson]

Yeah Richard,

I agree with you, just going through the mental excersise to try make it
work. In the end text strings are not suitable primary keys. Also
considering the names are not stable in their spelling, because of
recombination and gender issues, it makes them even worse.

Last night I was thinking if a hex conversion could work but no in the
computers do off and on, 0 and 1, they dont do maybe very well.

Cheers Scott

On Wed, Feb 9, 2022, 3:52 PM Richard Pyle <deepreef at bishopmuseum.org> wrote:

> Thanks, Scott.  I definitely see where you’re coming from, but I think any
> effort to use the text-string literal “name” as a “key” in the sense of
> digital databases (i.e., “Primary Key”) is not going to bear fruit.  The
> only context in which it makes sense is how GNI does it, where the literal
> UTF-8 character string (or perhaps more accurately, the hash of it) itself
> is the “thing” being identified (i.e., the subset of all UTF-8 character
> strings that have ever been used as a label representing a scientific name
> of an organism).  The context in which such identified “things” are useful
> is for tasks such as hunting for taxonomic name usages within OCR text from
> BHL scanned literature pages (for example).
>
>
>
> So while I agree with you that it would not be impossible to use
> text-string scientific names as a database “key” for something other than a
> particular UTF-8 character string, I believe that it is sufficiently
> impractical that almost all use cases would find the cost/benefit ratio of
> doing so to be less desirable than the cost/benefit ratio of using other
> values as keys, with the text-string name being simply a property of the
> identified “thing”.
>
>
>
> What text-string names are exceedingly GOOD for is serving as “finding
> aids” (to borrow a concept from the Library & Archive world) to discover
> information about biodiversity.  While these text-string names will not be
> perfect, they work extremely well for that purpose in the vast, vast, vast
> majority of cases.  To see this in action, type your favorite scientific
> name into a Google search box, and in the vast majority of cases the
> returned results will be relevant to the organism you had in mind.
>
>
>
> Aloha,
>
> Rich
>
>
>
> Richard L. Pyle, PhD
> Senior Curator of Ichthyology | Director of XCoRE
>
> *Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum*
>
> 1525 Bernice Street, Honolulu, HI 96817-2704
>
> Office: (808) 848-4115;  Fax: (808) 847-8252
>
> eMail: deepreef at bishopmuseum.org
>
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>
> *From:* Scott Thomson <scott.thomson321 at gmail.com>
> *Sent:* Wednesday, February 9, 2022 8:05 AM
> *To:* Richard Pyle <deepreef at bishopmuseum.org>
> *Cc:* TAXACOM <taxacom at lists.ku.edu>
> *Subject:* Re: Taxacom: Tropicos and gender of names
>
>
>
> I think some misinterpreted my comment on recipe for a 3 year old.
>
>
>
> Its tongue in cheek comment said to software eng students to appreciate
> coding, was taught with OO coding.
>
>
>
> I can imagine how you could do this and it requires a little more
> imagination than most databases use. Each taxon needs a key and as the
> names are not immutable it makes it difficult though not impossible for the
> name to be the key. To get around the non-immutable name issue is doable
> with queries and a second database to reference language changes.
>
>
>
> Not impossible.
>
>
>
> Only AI can get better than current system.
>
>
>
> Cheers Scott
>
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 9, 2022, 2:47 PM Richard Pyle via Taxacom <
> taxacom at lists.ku.edu> wrote:
>
> > It seems much simpler to wait until databasers grow up and can handle
> > concepts beyond those aimed to fit in the grasp of a 3-year old?
>
> EXACTLY!  The databases should be designed to accommodate the information
> as it exists. It's a mistake to modify the information as it exists to
> accommodate the needs of databases.  We should not allow the tail to wag
> the dog...
>
> Aloha,
> Rich
> Adolescent* databaser
>
> [*better than a toddler databaser, but suffering from unwarranted &
> unjustified self-confidence/self-righteousness, and eager to eventually
> grow up to the point of full maturity and wisdom]
>
> Richard L. Pyle, PhD
> Senior Curator of Ichthyology | Director of XCoRE
> Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum
> 1525 Bernice Street, Honolulu, HI 96817-2704
> Office: (808) 848-4115;  Fax: (808) 847-8252
> eMail: deepreef at bishopmuseum.org
> BishopMuseum.org
> Our Mission: Bishop Museum inspires our community and visitors through the
> exploration and celebration of the extraordinary history, culture, and
> environment of Hawaiʻi and the Pacific.
>
>
>
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