Taxacom: TAXACOM -- the long goodbye

[Karen Wilson]

Congratulations and thanks, Jim, Richard, Patricia and Peter, for creating and maintaining TAXACOM for such a long time.
It's a pioneering electronic project that has been invaluable for a wide range of systematists to ask questions, share results and comments, and generally keep in touch with each other.  Well done!

Regards
Karen Wilson


Karen L Wilson, AM
Honorary Research Associate, National Herbarium of New South Wales
Secretary of General Committee, International Code of Nomenclature for Algae, Fungi & Plants

Australian Botanic Garden Mount Annan
(02) 9810 7679
karen.wilson at botanicgardens.nsw.gov.au<mailto:karen.wilson at botanicgardens.nsw.gov.au>; also karenwilsonau at yahoo.com<mailto:karenwilsonau at yahoo.com>
botanicgardens.org.au











________________________________
From: Taxacom <taxacom-bounces at lists.ku.edu> on behalf of Beach, James H. via Taxacom <taxacom at lists.ku.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, December 9, 2025 6:02 AM
To: TAXACOM <taxacom at lists.ku.edu>
Subject: Taxacom: TAXACOM -- the long goodbye

Dear Taxacomers --

When Drs. Richard Zander and Patricia Eckel started the online service "Taxacom" in 1987 at the Buffalo Museum of Science in Buffalo, New York, access to the online resource was through dial-up modems. It was years before global internet mail or the World Wide Web.  They graciously allowed me to assist in sustaining Taxacom as we evolved it from the original bulletin board to Bitnet Listserv software, and later Mailman software, at universities in Michigan, Massachusetts, California, and finally Kansas.  Dr. Peter Rauch co-managed Taxacom with me for all of that time.

During the 38 years, we have had innumerable rigorous, nuanced, interesting and fun scholarly dialogues.  We focused on important and complex topics in systematics, biogeography, taxonomy and nomenclature, among other areas.

After consulting with the Richard and Patricia (now at the Missouri Botanical Garden) and with Peter, we agreed that this would be a good time to retire Taxacom and ride off into the sunset.  We plan to close the Taxacom email list later this month (December 2025). This could be a bit of a shock or perhaps a bit of relief for some.  Feel encouraged to send any thoughts you may have to the list (soon) or to me.

We would like to recognize the many intellectual contributions hundreds of scientists have made to the Taxacom collective consciousness on research issues.  But it seems hardly possible to adequately acknowledge all of the cognitive and keystroking effort you put in over 38 years that made Taxacom worth receiving and reading.  I hope you feel a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment for keeping Taxacom subscribers enlightened, and sometimes even entertained, with your wisdom and wit.

I will archive the e-mail contents of the Taxacom mailing list archive in standard ".mbox' format files, so should there be a scholar or initiative in the future interested in what you all did here the archived mail will be preserved and easily read.   I will make those files available upon request to anyone early in 2026.

Thank you again for subscribing, contributing, or for just hanging out with Taxacom.  It has been fun, and it has been a good run.


With best wishes,

Jim Beach


James H. Beach
Biodiversity Institute
University of Kansas
1345  Jayhawk  Blvd
Lawrence, KS 66045
Cell:   785.331.8508
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