Rod's somewhat hyperbolic interpretation of this thread notwithstanding, I think it's fair to say that everybody cares. But everybody is also hugely over-committed and under-funded.
Biodiversity Informatics is now in its adolescence. Growing pains (and tantrums) are to be expected. In an ideal world, all endeavors (including human maturation) would bypass the teenage years. Speaking as the parent of a teenager, I can sympathize with the frustrations and the temptation to throw in the towel. But I maintain confidence (both as a parent, and as a pseudo-practitioner of Biodiversity Informatics stuff) that this development phase will eventually pass; and things will be better on the other side.
So...back to my original questions:
1) Should the orange LSID icon (i.e., http://zoobank.org/images/lsidlogo.jpg) be displayed next to LSIDs on HTML pages (as per recommendation #33 on p. 23 of the LSID draft Applicability Statement, http://www.tdwg.org/fileadmin/subgroups/guid/LSID_Applicability_Statement_dr aft.pdf)?
2) If so, what should it link to (if anything)? The aforementioned Applicability Statement says, "An icon linking to an explanation of the LSID should be present...", and the suggested text is This is a Life Sciences Identifier (LSID), a permanent, globally unique identifier for this data item. Use this LSID whenever you need to refer to this data item. On the ZooBank site, I use this text for the mouse-over on the icon, but I wanted the icon itself to link to something more substantative, so I linked to http://lsids.sourceforge.net/
3) Given that http://lsids.sourceforge.net/ leads me to an "embarassing" terminus, should I:
a) simply change the link to http://sourceforge.net/projects/lsid/ ?
b) remove the link entirely?
c) wait until this thread reaches an eventual conclusion, and shift to a google code (or whatever) link?
I'm thinking that in the short-term (i.e., tomorrow), I'll go with option "a". In the middle term (i.e., if/when it's clear that sourceforge will not be the permanent home) I'll go with option "b". In the long term, I'll go with whatever emerges out of option "c".
Thanks for any feedback...
Aloha, Rich
-----Original Message----- From: tdwg-tag-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-tag-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Tony.Rees@csiro.au Sent: Wednesday, August 26, 2009 8:56 PM To: r.page@bio.gla.ac.uk; tdwg-tag@lists.tdwg.org Subject: Re: [tdwg-tag] LSID Sourceforge URL & LSID Best Practices
Rod page wrote:
<snip> 1. It's perfectly acceptable for the public face of a major biodiversity informatics project to be broken in a way that makes us look amateurish. </snip>
At the e-Biosphere open discussion session, I reported an interesting and unfortunately not totally uncommon experience with major biodiversity informatics sens. lat, that several were either broken (e.g. OBIS searches for common taxa) or returned incomplete, or over-complete (correct + incorrect) data, and nobody seemed to care at this point. I guess it's just not mission-critical enough for anyone who does care??
Regards - Tony
Tony Rees Manager, Divisional Data Centre, CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, GPO Box 1538, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia Ph: 0362 325318 (Int: +61 362 325318) Fax: 0362 325000 (Int: +61 362 325000) e-mail: Tony.Rees@csiro.au Manager, OBIS Australia regional node, http://www.obis.org.au/ Biodiversity informatics research activities: http://www.cmar.csiro.au/datacentre/biodiversity.htm Personal info:
http://www.fishbase.org/collaborators/collaboratorsummary.cfm?%3E id=1566
-----Original Message----- From: tdwg-tag-bounces@lists.tdwg.org [mailto:tdwg-tag-bounces@lists.tdwg.org] On Behalf Of Roderic Page Sent: Thursday, 27 August 2009 4:51 PM To: Technical Architecture Groupmailing list Subject: Re: [tdwg-tag] LSID Sourceforge URL & LSID Best Practices
OK, the message I'm getting is that:
- It's perfectly acceptable for the public face of a major
biodiversity informatics project to be broken in a way that makes us look amateurish.
- TDWG must guarantee universal analysis at all times (even
thought China may, on a whim, ban access to any site it choses).
- That TDWG is already using Google Code for Darwin Core
(http://code.google.com/p/darwincore/ ) is, of course, irrelevant to this discussion, as is the fact that Google Code seems fine for GBIF (http://code.google.com/p/gbif-ecat/ ) and EOL (http://code.google.com/p/eol-website/ ) projects.
- Nobody thought these issues were important when the original
project was set up on SourceForge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SourceForge ).
- That Greg Whitbread's puns are appalling.
I'm clearly too worked up about this, but all I'm looking for is a simple fix to a simple problem. Instead, we're off on some tangent about incorporation, instead of actually dealing with the issue at hand. Perhaps I shouldn't get too bothered, and take this discussion as tacit agreement that LSIDs are doomed anyway.
Regards
Rod
Roderic Page Professor of Taxonomy DEEB, FBLS 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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