[Taxacom] Wikipedia vs. science [some wider issues]

[Stephen Thorpe]

interesting, but perhaps worth some further thought regarding the fact that something designed for use by other ant taxonomists has been made available to everybody ... not just idiotic Wikipedians, but also governmental biosecurity agencies, etc., realistically both of which could have a somewhat different slant and expectation of what is on offer from the databases than?what was?intended. AntWeb/AntCat as an example probably doesn't highlight the potential problems as much as some other databases, in part because ants are a relatively small and well curated taxon now in a way that cannot be said of moths, weevils, flies, or the entirely of marine life ...
?
Stephen

From: John Longino <jacklongino at gmail.com>
To: Roderic Page <r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk> 
Cc: taxacom <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>; Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>; Jim Croft <jim.croft at gmail.com> 
Sent: Wednesday, 16 May 2012 1:54 AM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Wikipedia vs. science [some wider issues]


Ah yes. Thanks for historical clarification, re silos. So we need another term.? 

re Stephen's query, AntWeb and AntCat resources are designed for other ant taxonomists. The data are as or more reliable than what you would find in an arrangement of specimens in a museum or a published catalogue of taxonomic literature. There is a constant process of curation, and mechanisms for curators to be alerted to errors. In principle, I find the process to be much like what goes on in a traditional collection, but with the ability to have 10 ant curators in the ant wing instead of one. The novelty is having everything we do be highly visible, like museum displays that allow visitors to look through the windows at scientists working.?

Jack




On May 15, 2012, at 1:17 AM, Roderic Page wrote:

A few quick comments.
>
>Silos
>
>"Silo" has a negative connotation, perhaps due to Al Gore's 1998 speech "The Digital Earth: Understanding our planet in the 21st Century" in which he noted that the vast majority of Landsat images hadn't ever been seen:
>
>"Instead, they are stored in electronic silos of data. We used to have an agricultural policy where we stored grain in Midwestern silos and let it rot while millions of people starved to death. Now we have an insatiable hunger for knowledge. Yet a great deal of data remains unused."
>
>Silo in this context is a set of data that is, either by accident or design, difficult to access, share and reuse. Obviously, one can use "silo" in any way you wish, but if you say "silos are great" don't be surprised if most people will assume you are arguing for restricting access to your data. 
>
>Wikipedia
>
>I've also had rather mixed experiences with Wikipedia. I suspect it's the nature of the beast. Anyone who reads Taxacom will see parallels between threads on this mailing lists and some of the discussions on Wikipedia. For some other thoughts on wikis and Wikipedia seen Jonathan Eisen's recent post http://phylogenomics.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/pluses-and-minuses-if-wikipediafying.html and the open access article "Making your database available through Wikipedia: the pros and cons" http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkr1195
>
>Evidence
>
>For me the take home message about the WoRMS/Wikipedia issue is not the personal foibles of Wikipedia contributors but the lack of access to the underlying primary literature. Most taxonomic databases are little more than digitised 5x3 index cards with no links to the literature (by which I mean digital links that take you to the actual publication). If you only have naked lists of names then you end up in a slanging match over which list is "authoritative". We all know that taxonomic databases have errors, these could be exposed and fixed much more quickly if we linked them to the underlying evidence. 
>
>Databases
>
>The notion that people make databases in order to get funding has it back to front. My sense is that most of the money available for biodiversity informatics is for infrastructure rather than content, hence the emphasis on developing networks, databases and tools. 
>
>Certainly, I've not had any funding for projects like BioStor http://biostor.org or iPhylo Linkout http://iphylo.org/linkout. I build these because I want to be able to access taxonomic information and link that information together. In terms of the bigger picture, if information isn't online then effectively it doesn't exist. If we want taxonomic information to be relevant then it needs to be online, so the issue becomes how to do that most effectively.
>
>Regards
>
>Rod
>
>
>
>---------------------------------------------------------
>Roderic Page
>Professor of Taxonomy
>Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine
>College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences
>Graham Kerr Building
>University of Glasgow
>Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
>
>Email: r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk
>Tel: +44 141 330 4778
>Fax: +44 141 330 2792
>Skype: rdmpage
>AIM: rodpage1962 at aim.com
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>Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com
>Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
>
>


************************************************
John T. (Jack) Longino
Professor, Department of Biology
257 S 1400 E, University of Utah
Salt Lake City, UT 84112

Longino Ant Lab at?https://sites.google.com/site/longinoantlab/

Project LLAMA at https://sites.google.com/site/longinollama/

Ants of Costa Rica on the Web at?https://sites.google.com/site/longinoantlab/ants-of-costa-rica