[Zoobank-list] Re: Zoogle versus ZooBank, ECat, Species2000, ITIS, uBio, etc.

[Richard Pyle]

Hi Wolfgang,

I agree that competition can inspire great results, but I believe we end up
with more net gain at lower net cost via cooperation in realms where there
is a larger common goal (like science).  I will continue to work with the
folks at Google as long as I believe that their contribution will work
synergistically (not competitively) with other efforts already underway.
Based on the tone of this article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/11/AR2005111100
674_pf.html

...and other sources, I am confident that the Google corporate philosophy is
more cooperative than competitive in the realm of efforts that support
scientific research.

The main value I see in competition and "versus" is the competition between
proprietary solutions "versus" public domain solutions.  Certainly, not all
biological data will be freely and completely accessible -- e.g.,
Thompson/ZR has a great deal invested in their databases, and should rightly
continue to profit from value-added data services.  Similarly, Google will
obviously not turn over their search algorithms or their complete caches and
indexes of web resources that cite biological data.  But the core
infrastructure (e.g., nomenclatural data of the sort encompassed by ZooBank)
should, in my opinion, be freely accessible (in its entirety) to anyone who
wishes to maintain a copy (analogous to how ITIS exposes its complete
dataset for free). Having such a free-access "backbone" to bioinformatics
data exchange will be of benefit both to the scientific community, and to
for-profit initiatives that gain from providing value-added components.

Aloha,
Rich

-----Original Message-----
From: zoobank-list-bounces at afriherp.org
[mailto:zoobank-list-bounces at afriherp.org]On Behalf Of Faunaplan at aol.com
Sent: Friday, November 18, 2005 1:23 AM
To: zoobank-list at afriherp.org
Subject: [Zoobank-list] Re: Zoogle versus ZooBank, ECat, Species2000,
ITIS,uBio, etc.


Dear All,
what is so bad about competition?
When you want to build a major community building you would call for a
competition among architects to get the best solution. So why not open up a
more competitive side in the struggle to get the best solution for the
global, easy-to-use and accessible-to-all catalogue of life? After all, it
will be the users who decide what is the best solution, - and who knows that
better than a company like Google  (so I just cannot imagine they would
expect one man - as excellent as he might be - would do the job alone).

And why the word "versus" in the subject line? Obviously, the vision of
'ZooBank' is not having another competing list but rather an approved
basis - limited to the 'realm of nomenclature' - upon which any other lists
can build and rely upon.

So far, in reality the internet offers very little content for those who
urgently need reliable info on biodiversity and conservation issues, - and
if you find anything at all it's very likely to be misleading, - even
through portals like GBIF, etc. Already there are wonderful tools out there
(e.g., Roderic Page's) but the major missing element is the thesaurus of
taxonomic names which are needed as universal keywords for retrieval of
information. Only taxonomists familiar with their group of taxa can provide
that element, - and even for the basic 'ZooBank' project you will need much
more than just Zoological Record's enormous data resources.

Best wishes,
Wolfgang
-------------

Wolfgang Lorenz
Hoermannstr.4
D-82327 Tutzing, Germany