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Nomenclature burnout (1 Viewer)

I appreciate your faith in Ebird, but countless companies, websites, science projects and organizations fold every year.
We have the example of the birds of the Neotropics website... Originally free, and with voluntary contributions like a wiki. Now not free.. (who was it that was running that? ...Cornell?)
 
I appreciate your faith in Ebird, but countless companies, websites, science projects and organizations fold every year.
I wasn't expressing faith, but facts. Concerns about the viability of eBird in 20 years would certainly have been valid when it first began--but any such early concerns have now been proved wrong by it's rapid growth and development over the last 22 years. To quote the eBird website it now has "more than 100 million bird sightings contributed annually by eBirders around the world and an average participation growth rate of approximately 20% year over year. [It is] A collaborative enterprise with hundreds of partner organizations, thousands of regional experts, and hundreds of thousands of users...."

To suggest it would just disappear like some fly-by-night website strains credulity to say the least. And so does any suggestion that one of the earliest and most successful internet-based citizen science projects in history, which from it's beginning has done everything it could to encourage mass participation, would suddenly start actively discouraging participation by charging a fee. But I know some people will worry about anything....
 
I wasn't expressing faith, but facts. Concerns about the viability of eBird in 20 years would certainly have been valid when it first began--but any such early concerns have now been proved wrong by it's rapid growth and development over the last 22 years. To quote the eBird website it now has "more than 100 million bird sightings contributed annually by eBirders around the world and an average participation growth rate of approximately 20% year over year. [It is] A collaborative enterprise with hundreds of partner organizations, thousands of regional experts, and hundreds of thousands of users...."

To suggest it would just disappear like some fly-by-night website strains credulity to say the least. And so does any suggestion that one of the earliest and most successful internet-based citizen science projects in history, which from it's beginning has done everything it could to encourage mass participation, would suddenly start actively discouraging participation by charging a fee. But I know some people will worry about anything....
Also the fact you can download all your data from eBird quite easily so would be simple enough to import elsewhere if something happened.
 
We have the example of the birds of the Neotropics website... Originally free, and with voluntary contributions like a wiki. Now not free.. (who was it that was running that? ...Cornell?)
Birds of the World? The digital version of the All the Birds of the World book?
 
eBird was started 22 years ago in 2002--it has only gotten better and more central to birding since then, evolving without difficulty along with changes in technology, such as smart phones. It was started and is run by the world-renowned Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and is funded by them and the National Audubon Society. Both of these non-profit organizations have been in existence for over 100 years. I see absolutely no basis to be concerned about its future over the next 20 years. And if there were some change, both the birding and scientific communities would overwhelmingly desire continuity and continued access to the recorded data.
I have heard eBird explored going to a paid model for some features like image uploading but decided against it. I have to think that as the Library grows though at some point they alter their structure. There are over 200,000 photos and 7,600 audio recordings of the House Sparrow. I think at some point they will have to start being more selective about media data for some species or something because right now it's essentially free cloud storage for your images and diminishing returns have long been passed on many common species.
 
bird ranks like species are human creations with no basis in science.
That's a sad thing to believe - I pity you ;)

Life originated once --- species/taxa split off, and afterward either died or survived. We know it must have happened in a particular way and modern taxonomies try to reflect that historic reality.
 
Birds of the World? The digital version of the All the Birds of the World book?
No. The Neotropics website was separate, a bit like birds of north America but without the paywall. It's original URL was this:


Cornell erected a paywall and "integrated" the material into BoW. That's where you'll be redirected to if you try the above today.

So anyone who made voluntary (written) contributions in expectation that the world would be able to see them free of charge was deceived.
 
Cornell erected a paywall and "integrated" the material into BoW. That's where you'll be redirected to if you try the above today.

So anyone who made voluntary (written) contributions in expectation that the world would be able to see them free of charge was deceived.
What is financed with subscriptions? collections, laboratories, researchers?
 
What is financed with subscriptions? collections, laboratories, researchers?
Don't know. I'm personally not persuaded by the the idea that a paywall is fine because the money is used for "good" causes. I believe information this important should be freely accessible to all under a donation model (Wikipedia, internet archive etc).

I also strongly object to the imposition of Clements as the "one true taxonomy" as discussed many times previously
 
Don't know. I'm personally not persuaded by the the idea that a paywall is fine because the money is used for "good" causes. I believe information this important should be freely accessible to all under a donation model (Wikipedia, internet archive etc).
We need someone from Cornell Lab to explain. Fortunately, we still have H&M or IOC for a free consultation
 
No. The Neotropics website was separate, a bit like birds of north America but without the paywall. It's original URL was this:


Cornell erected a paywall and "integrated" the material into BoW. That's where you'll be redirected to if you try the above today.

So anyone who made voluntary (written) contributions in expectation that the world would be able to see them free of charge was deceived.

Got it, yeah when I looked for the page it sent me to BOW hence my confusion. I can't speak to how they handled past contributors but anyone who authors content for it now gets free lifetime access. (I am the author for two species.)
 
Don't know. I'm personally not persuaded by the the idea that a paywall is fine because the money is used for "good" causes. I believe information this important should be freely accessible to all under a donation model (Wikipedia, internet archive etc).

I also strongly object to the imposition of Clements as the "one true taxonomy" as discussed many times previously
Good news then, as WGAC will be the new standard going forward, and Clements will simply be following them, as will IOC and Birdlife.
 
That's a sad thing to believe - I pity you ;)

Life originated once --- species/taxa split off, and afterward either died or survived. We know it must have happened in a particular way and modern taxonomies try to reflect that historic reality.
From past discussions, Jurek believes in evolution. and that different species share a common origin and form nested clades. His statement is more that whether you consider a specific clade a tribe, subfamily, family, or Order are all to some degree arbitrary, because they try to divide up into discrete bins of ranks organismal history which is by its nature is continuous. Historically it has been completely arbitrary and there will always be some degree of arbitrariness to the exercise.
 
Also in regards to the paywall for BotW, at $50 a year last I checked its hardly some sort of onerous burden. That amounts to less than $5 a month, way cheaper than most streaming channel subscriptions or the average meal out.
 
Also in regards to the paywall for BotW, at $50 a year last I checked its hardly some sort of onerous burden. That amounts to less than $5 a month, way cheaper than most streaming channel subscriptions or the average meal out.
Also normally it's available for even less than that. I believe there's almost always a discount code (BIRD35 if I remember right) sent out in their newsletters and they keep running free stuff. Recently one month all articles were free to access. It looks like right now they're back to doing a select number of accounts as freely available (one of the ones I authored is one of them Fiery-throated Hummingbird - Panterpe insignis - Birds of the World).
 
Also in regards to the paywall for BotW, at $50 a year last I checked its hardly some sort of onerous burden. That amounts to less than $5 a month, way cheaper than most streaming channel subscriptions or the average meal out.
Suggest this very much depends on your circumstances. What you mean is that for someone in your situation it's hardly an onerous burden. Surprisingly, most of the world's population isn't.
 
Also normally it's available for even less than that. I believe there's almost always a discount code (BIRD35 if I remember right) sent out in their newsletters and they keep running free stuff. Recently one month all articles were free to access. It looks like right now they're back to doing a select number of accounts as freely available (one of the ones I authored is one of them Fiery-throated Hummingbird - Panterpe insignis - Birds of the World).
Sorry not the point... ...Pretty much all commercial organisations run promotions.
 
Good news then, as WGAC will be the new standard going forward, and Clements will simply be following them, as will IOC and Birdlife.
Hopefully this won't happen any time soon. Thankfully, there are other taxonomies apart from these.

As you've pointed out, taxonomies are arbitrary. There are many reasons for this. Some are:
  • Our view changes with technology and other evidence
  • A phylogeny/taxonomy at the level of the individual depends on weighting many different relatedness histories, some of which may be in conflict (different genes, for example). Changing the weights changes the (averaged) outcome.
  • Reconstruction often yields more than one equally probable tree, perhaps because there is not enough evidence to distinguish between them. Which you choose is arbitrary
  • We cut the tree arbitrarily to produce our taxa (whether at species or higher levels)
Since there are so many subjective decisions that go into creating a taxonomy (even "what objective branch cutting method should I use?"), taxonomy should never stop being in flux.

Even if this weren't the case, species are constantly evolving. Sometimes formation of new species can be quite "fast" (https://www.axios.com/2017/12/15/a-new-bird-species-is-seen-emerging-in-real-time-1513307152). Extinction even faster of course.

I don't want a single taxonomy for birds. It would not reflect biological reality. I certainly don't want one which doesn't admit of alternatives.
 
Suggest this very much depends on your circumstances. What you mean is that for someone in your situation it's hardly an onerous burden. Surprisingly, most of the world's population isn't.
One particular promotion I have seen deserves mention. Membership in BirdsCaribbean is - for a Caribbean National - cheaper than the above mentioned price, and includes access to Birds of the World as long as that national also lives within the region.

Niels
 

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