well, Bob may not be interested in having a global, all taxa, comprehensive
taxonomic/nomenclatural/bibliographic database, but I am, and so are plenty of
other people ...   it is possible to achieve, but the main problem is stopping the proliferation of
errors along the acronym food chain ... as I'm sure Bob would agree?   as I said in response to something that Chris Thompson said, I don't think that
working specialist taxonomists are necessarily the best people to do this,
although they should certainly be consulted along the way ...   Stephen

________________________________ From: Bob Mesibov <mesi...@southcom.com.au> To: TAXACOM <taxa...@mailman.nhm.ku.edu> Sent: Monday, 20 February 2012 11:23 AM Subject: Re: [Taxacom] validation of taxon names

Rod page wrote (disingenuously?):

"The point is not whether taxonomists consider them to be names, but how do we
find out what these things mean when we encounter them in scientific papers,
phylogenies, as entries in databases, as labels on specimens, etc.?"

And who is 'we'?

This discussion has reminded me of my Dad saying "The question 'Which came
first, the chicken or the egg?' is easily answered if you know which chicken and
which egg." The generic 'we' that Rod refers to might best be served by a
Gigantic All-Names All-Species Online Taxonomic Resource (GAAOTR) of the kind
that Armand Turpel would like to see. In contrast, the day-to-day work of
biodiversity science (pests/diseases, flora and fauna surveys, etc etc) is best
served by taxonomically limited or geographically limited resources which have
been compiled by specialists. (Name the chicken and the egg you want detailed
information about.)

Rod's 'we' may be imagining that these specialist compilations can be extended
to cover the whole biota of Earth. Dream on. This isn't going to happen because
taxonomy doesn't scale. The reliability and usefulness of taxonomic resources
depends on how much work has been put into them by specialists, and their
numbers and their efforts are limited.

For that reason, the best possible use of specialists by the 'we' is on
compilation projects targeted at the taxa and the places that 'we' most need to
know about. Some of this kind of prioritisation happens in the real world, but
probably not enough.

It is technically possible to build the GAAOTR, but its usefulness will be
limited by its quality, which will vary internally. A 'we' going through the
GAAOTR for economically, medically, etc-ly important information may realise
that the section of interest isn't solid because there are lots of loose names
and the latest papers were published in the 1930s. Next step: contact
specialists. A smarter 'we' would have gone straight to the specialists and
asked "What do we know about X?", bypassing the GAAOTR.

[As I should have done recently. I started to compiled a species list (ca 300
names) from a well-known acroynm which gets its names from another well-known
acronym. About 1/5 of the list was seriously wrong: spellings, authors, dates,
synonymies. The compilation work - from original sources - will take Y hours, of
which maybe 0.05Y was saved by starting with the GAAOTR.]

-- Dr Robert Mesibov Honorary Research Associate Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery Home contact: PO Box 101, Penguin, Tasmania, Australia 7316 Ph: (03) 64371195; 61 3 64371195 Webpage: http://www.qvmag.tas.gov.au/?articleID=570

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