[tdwg-tag] SourceForge LSID project websites broken - role for TDWG?

[Jim Croft]

Really like this analogy Roger.  Guess it is ancestral, but I had not
heard it before - will henceforth use it shamelessly.

It opens some interesting philosophical questions for TDWG (and other
community projects).  For example, even if we had the funds to build a
walled garden (gated community? sheltered workshop?) I am prepared to
entertain argument that we should not do it, investing rather in
improving and defending the commons, fending of the looming tragedy
thereof.

TDWG is (or supposed to be) about 'standards' and I have always taken
this to be standards "by all, for all", but increasingly we get drawn
into implementation and application, in effect walled instances of the
standards intended for the commons.  This is unavoidable as the
standards have to be ground truthed and reality tested but the
boundary between a standard and its implementation is becoming grey
and oftentimes I get this uneasy feeling that the commons is getting
walled off by tribes of Google wannabes with their perfect hammer for
our imperfect nail.

(Also like, "we are clever techie people".  Clever techie people
brought us thalidomide, Microsoft, the titanic, Hiroshima, the leaf
blower, silly putty, climate change and computer driven derivative
trading...)

jim - deciding whether he should go to work or lie down in front of
the GUI/LSID/DOI bulldozers...  :)

On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 7:57 PM, Roger Hyam <rogerhyam at mac.com> wrote:
> If we don't have the money to build a walled garden we have to graze
> on the common with everyone else.

-- 
_________________
Jim Croft ~ jim.croft at gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499

"Words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality."
- Joseph Conrad, author (1857-1924)

"I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said,
but I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant."
 - attributed to Robert McCloskey, US State Department spokesman