[Taxacom] taxonomic names databases

Tue Aug 23 14:04:02 CDT 2016

Hi Tony (and whoever else is reading your thread... hopefully not only me! ;-)

I am curious to know if there is someone in this list with enough experience to help less advanced users of Taxapad. In collaboration with friend and colleague Darren Ward, I have kept a website on world species of microgastrine parasitoid wasps (Hymenoptera, Braconidae, almost 3,000 species altogether) for around three years now, but I find the setting/maintaining of the site is neither simple nor intuitive -and certainly the importing and exporting of data and images is not straightforward! I like A LOT the idea behind Scratchpads, and would love to add/update more data in the site we keep, but have grown frustrated working with it (changes are sometimes made and it is difficult to return to earlier versions, uploading of images and attaching them to individual taxa takes time, things are not intuitive, the help function is not that useful, tutorials in the Scratchpads site do not cover many important things that would be great to have explained, and so many other time-consuming things that are just difficult to do). I am aware that perhaps the problem is not Scratchpads per se but me... However, I would love to hear from someone willing to offer advice on how to improve Scratchpads sites (from both an aesthetic point of view and (most importantly) from a functional point of view). We would welcome any help, and, if anyone is interested in spending time helping us to improve our Scratchpads site, we would of course add her/him as coauthor in the site citation. I do not mean any publicity for our site here, but provide the link in case anyone is willing to take a look and provide some advice (http://microgastrinae.myspecies.info/). Thanks a lot in advance!

In any case, I am very much in favour of Scratchpads, and also of the possibility of linking data there to publications in journals such as 'Biodiversity Data Journal', something that is being explored by several colleagues (e.g., the British Checklist of Hymenoptera). Again, the theory behind that is much easier than the actual practice of linking things (and the actual difficulties to do that). Not complaining, just hoping things would improve in those fronts, at least for the least advance users like me :-(

Cheers,
Jose

--
José L. Fernández-Triana, Ph.D.
Research Scientist/Chercheur Scientifique
Canadian National Collection of Insects (CNC)/Collection nationale canadienne d'insects (CNC)
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada/Agriculture et Agroalimentaire Canada
960 Carling Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0C6, CANADA 
Telephone/Téléphone: 613-759-1034. 
Email/Courriel: jose.fernandez at agr.gc.ca

-----Original Message-----
From: Taxacom [mailto:taxacom-bounces at mailman.nhm.ku.edu] On Behalf Of Tony Rees
Sent: August-22-16 9:37 PM
To: John Grehan
Cc: taxacom
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] taxonomic names databases

Also (although I am maybe talking to no-one here...) addressing one of Stephen's earlier concerns, Scratchpads has comments/forum features where folk can question data on taxon pages (for example) and, with a well run site, get responses and fixes as needed, as per these examples from the Nannotax Scratchpad site (taxonomy + more for extant and fossil
coccolithophores):

http://ina.tmsoc.org/Nannotax3/ntax-recent_comments.php

I looked at this and was impressed as an example of successful use of the interface between taxonomic/related data compilation and viewers of the resulting pages.

Cheers - Tony

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

On 23 August 2016 at 11:18, Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Scratchpads current sites list here: http://scratchpads.eu/ 
> explore/sites-list
>
> - Tony
>
> On 23 August 2016 at 11:12, Tony Rees <tonyrees49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> At the risk of prolonging this thread arguably past its useful 
>> purpose, I of course omitted the most obvious candidate software for 
>> persons or distributed teams who wish to collate taxonomic and other 
>> content not elsewhere available (or only in sub-optimal form as 
>> claimed for LepIndex) - Scratchpads (http://scratchpads.eu/) - 
>> claiming currently 950+ installations covering 162,000+ taxa. Unless 
>> I am wrong, this would offer another (and well supported) route for 
>> those wishing to start back filling the "missing" high-grade 
>> Lepidopteran names area. I believe Scratchpads v2 onwards can also 
>> export their taxon data which is a definite advantage over Scratchpads v1, which could not.
>>
>> Now I shall walk away and hope when I return to see the process of 
>> community assembly of high quality Lepidopteran names not only 
>> commenced but thriving...
>>
>> Regards - Tony
>>
>> Tony Rees, New South Wales, Australia https://about.me/TonyRees
>>
>
>
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