[Taxacom] Digitizing Science Collections

[Geoff Read]

On Fri, May 18, 2012 12:33 pm, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
>If the
> WP issue hadn't come up, how long might it have taken for WoRMS to
> correct its Munididae page?

Thank you for alerting the relevant person. So many errors, so little
time. It isn't possible for editors to make it all perfect,  but
personally as a WoRMS editor (Polychaeta) I try to do those errors
reported by the public ASAP.  But note we all have other real jobs, some
editors are more active than others, and some apparently simple editing
requires working through a cascade of many other entries, so instant cures
aren't always possible.

It's also important to realise that the current contact person for a taxon
most likely DID NOT have had anything to do with a bad historical record
that's in the system. So go easy with the public lashings over mistakes.
(In the case of the Polychaeta those mistakes may well date back to
printed catalogues of fifty years ago.)

> WoRMS editors need to understand that they
> have a responsibility to take care when putting data online for public
> use.

Oh Stephen.  What a novel idea!!

> And, to make matters worse, the WoRMS page carries no indication that
> there was ever any editing done after its initial creation, thus (whether
> deliberately or not, I don't know) rewriting history and hiding the need
> for the correction! Seems "dodgy" to me ...

I haven't followed the case, but a manual edit to the name, authorship,
validity, type species, and senior synonym creates a new entry in the edit
history at the bottom of the page. Other edits to other fields don't show
the public who changed them, though I'm sure the database managers could
tell you who did what if it became an issue.  I agree it's nowhere near as
transparent as wikis are, and it's unfortunately not possible to see the
earlier version (which would be useful) except elsewhere via the 'wayback
machine',  but it isn't 'dodgy'.

Geoff