[Taxacom] Explicit vs implied linking

[Stephen Thorpe]

Here is an example:
name on Wikispecies (and in fact only on Wikispecies): 
http://ptp.pensoft.eu/external_details.php?type=1&query=Esagonatopus%20floridensis

name not on Wikispecies: 
http://ptp.pensoft.eu/external_details.php?type=1&query=Esagonatopus%20perdebilis




________________________________
From: David Remsen (GBIF) <dremsen at gbif.org>
To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
Cc: David Remsen (GBIF) <dremsen at gbif.org>; taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Sent: Wed, 1 December, 2010 8:42:50 PM
Subject: Explicit vs implied linking


Stephen,

There is a very practical answer to your question and I've ground-truthed it to 
some degree in my former work with uBio. ? The BioOne journals used the same 
methodology to link to ITIS, ?by appending a name to the end of a URL and 
casting it out as a link in case something stuck on the ITIS end. ? What they 
found, ?and what I used to ask people is - If you click on the dead link once - 
OK things happen. ? You click the second time and you get nothing. ? You gonna 
click a third time? ?

Generating an explicit index of links is trivial for structured data management 
systems. ? ?It is easier to do it the way you suggest but my experience is that 
stale links don't get used. ??

DR


On Nov 30, 2010, at 11:22 PM, Stephen Thorpe wrote:

thanks David
>
>just one comment:
>
>>The method you suggest, ?however, is not the best way to do this<
>
>actually I rather think it *is* the best way
>
>GBIF has rather a tendency to overcomplicate matters, but if one has good honest 
>data, then simplicity is best
>
>why would you worry if the page actually existed or not? If it doesn't exist, 
>Wikispecies will tell you that it doesn't, and you can simply press the back 
>browser button to get back to GBIF. I don't see this as a problem. On the other 
>hand, if you only add links to pages that exist, then how do you keep up with 
>new pages as they?come?into existence at any time? If the link is already there, 
>then it will work *as soon as* the page comes into existence, without any work 
>needed by GBIF, which is surely preferable?
>
>IMHO, GBIF should concentrate on what it can provide that nobody else can (e.g., 
>maps of distributions from unpublished museum specimens, etc.), and provide 
>links to other information that Wikispecies, for one example, might be better at 
>providing ...
>
>Stephen
>
>
>
________________________________
From:?David Remsen (GBIF) <dremsen at gbif.org>
>To:?Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
>Cc:?David Remsen (GBIF) <dremsen at gbif.org>;?taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>Sent:?Wed, 1 December, 2010 11:03:53 AM
>Subject:?Re: PS: [Taxacom] saturday morning fun
>
>
>Perhaps because it's more complex than you think. ? I know exactly how to do it. 
>? I did say we don't have programmer capacity to add that functionality now. ? 
>In fact, ?we have a linking mechanism in place via the Global Names Index for 
>just this sort of thing. ? The method you suggest, ?however, is not the best way 
>to do this. ? Rather than concatenate any taxon name to the template you 
>provided, ?it would be better to generate an explicit link of only those pages 
>which actually exist and provide them as an index to globalnames.org
>
>
>This provides a systematic way to link multiple collections of links, ?it uses a 
>simple international data standard as the format for the index, and it works. ? 
>?That feature is on a feature request list as is, now, ?your recommendation.
>
>
>http://code.google.com/p/gbif-dataportal/issues/detail?id—
>
>
>DR
>
>
>
>On Nov 30, 2010, at 9:35 PM, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
>
>David,
>>
>>I am utterly astonished that you currently lack the technical capacity to have a 
>>link on each of your taxon pages 
>>to?http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/NAME_OF_TAXON
>>
>>it is even odder that BHL also seem to lack such a capacity
>>
>>by contrast, my *friends* ZooKeys seem to have managed to do it just fine on 
>>their taxon profiles facility ...
>>
>>Stephen
>>
>>
>>?
>>
________________________________
From:?David Remsen (GBIF) <dremsen at gbif.org>
>>To:?Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
>>Cc:?David Remsen (GBIF) <dremsen at gbif.org>;?taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>>Sent:?Tue, 30 November, 2010 9:13:46 PM
>>Subject:?Re: PS: [Taxacom] saturday morning fun
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>Actually I think linking to wikispecies and other select databases (such as 
>>species pages currently offered by GBIF national Nodes) is a great idea. ? In 
>>fact, ?it would be done if we had the technical capacity to actively refactor 
>>the data portal as it's on a feature request list. ? ?I hope we will be able to 
>>add this as you suggest.
>>
>>
>>As to the purity of my motives, ?I really don't know what that is all about.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>On Nov 29, 2010, at 10:58 PM, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
>>
>>PS: you see the bit where I become suspicious and start doubting your apparently 
>>pure motives is this: it would be very technically easy and fully consistent 
>>with your stated aims and motivations to simply?put on each of your taxon pages 
>>a link to the corresponding Wikispecies page (for example, for 
>>Mimus,http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mimus, and note that all Wikispecies 
>>pages have this simple URL 
>>structurehttp://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/NAME_OF_TAXON), perhaps saying 
>>something like "here you may find useful data on this taxon, though being open 
>>edit, we cannot vouch for its accuracy". But this would require (1) genuinely 
>>pure motives on your part; and (2) a grasp of the difference between theory and 
>>reality (i.e., in theory Wikispecies is unreliable and a pointless waste of your 
>>time, but in *reality* ...)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
________________________________
From:?David Remsen (GBIF) <dremsen at gbif.org>
>>>To:?Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
>>>Cc:?David Remsen (GBIF) <dremsen at gbif.org>;?taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
>>>Sent:?Tue, 30 November, 2010 10:30:05 AM
>>>Subject:?Re: [Taxacom] saturday morning fun
>>>
>>>Stephen, 
>>>
>>>
>>>Thanks for the summary. ?I'd be interested to hear what various Catalogue of 
>>>Life providers think of all this. ?I know some taxonomic sectors, ?like the 
>>>Lepidoptera, ?derived from LepIndex NHM-London, ?have not been thoroughly 
>>>reviewed, falling into your 'raw' category.
>>>
>>>
>>>You hit the nail on the head when you say it provides you with a starting point. 
>>>? We use it as a starting point too. ? We could forego this and simply leave the 
>>>raw data as it is but it seemed an improvement to go with it. ?We are trying to 
>>>expand the capacity to access other, perhaps more comprehensive or refined 
>>>sources, ?should they be offered or available. ? At the moment, that starting 
>>>place is the one of the few places we can go. ?Of course, flaking together 
>>>disparate sets of even high quality data introduces additional complications but 
>>>I'd be happy to take them on.
>>>
>>>
>>>I'm sure we (at least I) have not fully grasped all the ramifications of this. 
>>>?Ive tried to relay some of the complexities and a rationale behind what we are 
>>>faced with and do. ? I failed to mention the constraints we are under to improve 
>>>the issues raised this weekend. ?Until very recently we have had 2.5 programmers 
>>>working on the entirety of our infrastructure with nearly no resources for the 
>>>portal to fix these problems. ? This will change in 2011.
>>>
>>>
>>>Best,
>>>David
>>>
>>>
>>>On Nov 29, 2010, at 9:47 PM, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
>>>
>>>You mention some key issues here. Let me focus on just one of them?for the 
>>>moment, namely COL and its suitability as a data provider for GBIF. I suspect 
>>>that GBIF have basically just thought something like "well, COL is an 
>>>aggregation of trusted specialist databases in a form that GBIF can use" - but 
>>>the reality is *way* more complex. For me, when starting to compile a 
>>>Wikispecies page, I will often use COL as a *starting point only*, actually 
>>>little more than a convenient way of getting big lists of taxa formatted and put 
>>>on Wikispecies pages for further scrutiny. Sometimes, the COL?data is so 
>>>obviously worse than useless, that I don't use it at all, not *even* as a 
>>>starting point. The data providers from COL vary widely in nature. Some of them 
>>>are near complete for their group, others are highly fragmentary. Some are 
>>>*very* raw, others are quite well polished. Sometimes, there are problems in the 
>>>way that COL interprets the data from sources, so all sorts of synonyms get 
>>>interpreted as valid, etc. Another issue, which I don't fully understand yet, 
>>>and I could perhaps be mistaken (???), is that even in COL 2010, much of the 
>>>data seems to have been harvested in 2008 ... I would have thought that COL 2010 
>>>would have harvested its data in 2010. If not, then COL is running a couple of 
>>>years behind its own data providers, who will typically not be completely 
>>>up-to-date either. So, in summary, I would say that COL is nothing more than a 
>>>convenient *starting point* for building solid biodiversity data, and it 
>>>requires a fair amount of careful and informed interpretation, not to mention a 
>>>great deal of manual work to improve on it. I'm not sure that GBIF has fully 
>>>grasped this? For example, in COL, the family Scarabaeidae is actually what 
>>>would almost universally be called the subfamily Scarabaeinae of the family 
>>>Scarabaeidae, and this is not at all obvious. So, COL is actually quite good if 
>>>you want data on Scarabaeinae, but completely lacking in any data whatsoever on 
>>>the *huge* scarabaeid subfamilies Melolothinae and Rutelinae.
>>>>Cheers,
>>>>Stephen
>>>
>>>?
>>
>>?
>
>?