[Taxacom] Comprehensive genera list (was: Expressing synonymy as a schematic)

[Stephen Thorpe]

well, I think I was "talking clean", rather than "talking dirty"! There is considerable room for variation even within "clean lists", given the nature of taxonomy. Incidentally Tony, I checked out IRMNG for a random small family of molluscs(Bullinidae), and found it to be less clean than you might think. My preliminary investigations on the family, now put on Wikispecies (http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bullinidae), suggest that there is much greater complexity, even at the genus level, than one might think, particularly for fossil taxa. I have no immediate intention of completing it on Wikispecies for the whole family, as my main focus at present is on N.Z. taxa...
Cheers,
Stephen


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From: "Tony.Rees at csiro.au" <Tony.Rees at csiro.au>
To: stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz; jim.croft at gmail.com 
Cc: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu 
Sent: Thursday, 24 May 2012 1:38 PM
Subject: RE: [Taxacom] Comprehensive genera list (was: Expressing synonymy as a schematic)


Hi Stephen, Jim, all,
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Actually I prefer a conceptual demarcation I got from Rainer Froese some years ago ? there are clean lists and there are dirty lists; dirty lists accept names ?in the wild? as (for example) misspelled in the text of non-systematic papers, museum specimen labels, etc., while clean lists attempt to include only verifiable spellings/orthographies i.e. as in the original publication (or sometimes subsequent published misspellings also). That is not to say that ?clean? lists may not contain a residual small percentage of transcription errors but it should be an order of magnitude smaller than ?dirty? lists. So on that basis, IRMNG attempts to be ?clean? rather than ?dirty? by relying on notionally clean sources, although some bits of dirt do remain (in the main from a couple of early sources used which turned out to be less clean that I expected, but these are gradually being found and fixed, starting with the genera).
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So according to the above categories, GNI, GBIF, OBIS, OZCAM and similar would be ?dirty? lists (no slur intended, that is their function) which can at least be retrospectively cleaned up (i.e. misspellings identified) by reference to suitably ?clean? reference lists, insofar as these exist.
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When ?clean? lists disagree, for example as regards to the spelling or status of a scientific name, then that is a stimulus for a deeper investigation.
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Regards - Tony
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From:Stephen Thorpe [mailto:stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz] 
Sent: Thursday, 24 May 2012 11:15 AM
To: Jim Croft
Cc: Rees, Tony (CMAR, Hobart); taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Comprehensive genera list (was: Expressing synonymy as a schematic)
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though some are definitely more reliable than others ... there isn't one correct answer, but a range of answers?with different levels of stupidity! :)


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From:Jim Croft <jim.croft at gmail.com>
To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> 
Cc: "Tony.Rees at csiro.au" <Tony.Rees at csiro.au>; "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> 
Sent: Thursday, 24 May 2012 1:09 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Comprehensive genera list (was: Expressing synonymy as a schematic)

Ah, I see the problem...

There is no such thing a reliable source of names... there are just
sources of names... ;)

jim

On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 2:02 PM, Stephen Thorpe
<stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> wrote:
> Ah, I see the problem ... <snip/>
...Hallan isn't a reliable source for weevil names...