Well, Rod is pretty much describing me. I'm not a taxonomist and mostly find taxonomic discussions annoying. I pay attention to the byzantine taxonomy stuff only because I feel like I have to. I would like to use URIs that link to some source that takes care of the taxonomic stuff so that I don't have to provide the information myself. But I would like to only use URIs that are going to be in widespread use in the future. To use an analogy, I'm shopping for a video player. I want to make sure that I don't end up buying a Betamax and then find out later that everybody else is using VHS (OK, that dates me - I don't want to buy HD-DVD and find out that everybody else is using Blu-ray). Is uBio a Betamax/HD-DVD? I was thinking that the Global Names Index looked like VHS (or Blu-ray), but when I look in the box I only see the instruction book - the actual video player seems to be missing. The conclusion that I'm reaching at this point is that it is too early for me to buy.
Am I wrong about this? What is the likelihood that this situation will change in the next year (i.e. that there will be usable URIs with minimal metadata for GNI names)? Steve
Most users outside our field won't give a damn about the niceties of these distinctions, yet we persist in discussing them ad nauseam. Until we provide a single, very simple service that takes a name string and hides all this complexity (unless the user chooses to see the gory details) while still providing useful information, we will be stuck in multiple identifier hell. The tragedy is we've never had more people genuinely interested in linking to names than at present -- publishers are desperately trying to add "semantic value" to their content, and we are spectacularly ill-equipped to deliver this (and it's our own fault).
I rather suspect we're rapidly approaching the point where users outside taxonomy will simply say "to hell with these taxonomists, let's just use Wikipedia and be done with it."
Regards
Rod
Roderic Page Professor of Taxonomy Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine College of Medical, Veterinary and Life Sciences Graham Kerr Building University of Glasgow Glasgow G12 8QQ, UK
Email: r.page@bio.gla.ac.uk Tel: +44 141 330 4778 Fax: +44 141 330 2792 AIM: rodpage1962@aim.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1112517192 Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdmpage Blog: http://iphylo.blogspot.com Home page: http://taxonomy.zoology.gla.ac.uk/rod/rod.html
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