<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">OK, a slightly less ranty take on this.<div><br></div><div>It seems to me there are a couple of "use cases" we need to tease apart.</div><div><br></div><div>If the goal is to digitise and aggregate (e.g., transcribe museum labels, aggregate from old museum databases) then ultimately yes, you take whatever people give you and clean it. Ideally you'd give people tools to clean stuff up before they serve it, but you try and make the barriers as low as possible. </div><div><br></div><div>But once you have that data for the love of God (oops, rant) don't simply repackage dirty data. What motivated my initial tweet was having to deal with a mess from the EOL API where names may or may not have authorities, depending in part upon what the source of the classification was. It's a mess, and I don't understand why people insist on serving this stuff.</div><div><br></div><div>So I guess my point is that if you're a primary provider (i,.e., you're the person or institution that digitised the original metadata) then you have an excuse, but if you are serving data you got from someplace else, give me canonical names.</div><div><br></div><div>Regards</div><div><br></div><div>Rod</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">---------------------------------------------------------<br>Roderic Page<br>Professor of Taxonomy<br>Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine<br>College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences<br>Graham Kerr Building<br>University of Glasgow<br>Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK<br><br>Email: <a href="mailto:r.page@bio.gla.ac.uk">r.page@bio.gla.ac.uk</a><br>Tel: +44 141 330 4778<br>Fax: +44 141 330 2792</div><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">Skype: rdmpage<br>AIM: <a href="mailto:rodpage1962@aim.com">rodpage1962@aim.com</a><br>Facebook: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192">http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192</a><br>Twitter: <a href="http://twitter.com/rdmpage">http://twitter.com/rdmpage</a><br>Blog: <a href="http://iphylo.blogspot.com">http://iphylo.blogspot.com</a><br>Home page: <a href="http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html">http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html</a></div></span></span>
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