[Taxacom] taxonomic names databases

[Tony Rees]

Hi Stephen, John,

That's great - I applaud the facility to rapidly add names, authors and
works, and obtain ZooBank IDs for the same for use elsewhere, and
appreciate that as zoology moves forward this will become more the norm
(and/or automatically carried out) on new name creation.

My reservations regard the extent to which this may provide (1)
~~"complete" names lists, and (2) the same arranged in useable checklists
(accepted names vs. synonyms, coherent taxonomic hierarchies) any time
"soon". Unless there are scores of names waiting in the wings to be
uploaded, perhaps as "placeholder" names - currently ZooBank quotes 163,000
"nomenclatural acts" cf. at least 5 million published species names and
0.5m genera, to say nothing of higher taxa - and their is a taxonomic
super-reference constructed over all this employing the relationships
between these names acccording to even one taxonomic opinion, much less
several - ZooBank seems to me to be a lot premature in staking any claim to
these aspects in comparison to CoL and the other "big products" already in
this space, which as we have already seen are themselves lacking content
and/or may be out of date for at least some groups.

So to me, John's original question still stands - where best to create and
maintain taxon lists (preferably in a collaborative environment with good
database structures and IT support) in a place where content entered will
ideally also flow through to other systems rather than just form another
little data silo, as well as having sufficient community engagement for
data input and export as needed.

Since I believe John is in the USA (or even if he is not), he might also
find that ITIS is receptive to adding any data he may care to send them, or
letting him enter it remotely. Certainly data entered into ITIS would be
highly visible and not subject to potential future loss, and as we know
ITIS is a keen partner in the "names sharing" space as well as a
contributor to Catalogue of Life. Just a thought...

Regards - Tony

Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia
https://about.me/TonyRees



On 21 August 2016 at 15:52, Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz>
wrote:

> John,
> I have just now registered your Endoclita fahringeri on ZooBank:
> http://zoobank.org/References/6B36AB69-E80B-45C5-B383-590AA8478EC4
> Cheers,
> Stephen
>
>
>
>