Re: [Treebase-devel] harvesting

[Roderic P. <r....@bi...>]

It's a pity about the NSF ABI grant. I've not read the proposal in detail, but my gut feeling is the link between TreeBASE and ToLWeb is a mistake. The former matters, the later is basically moribund (let EOL have the aggregation space).

I'd like a usable database of trees that gives us an overview of what we know, provides a platform for people to do science, and exploits existing social networks and citation/provenance metrics to engage users. That's it. I've no particular desire for NEXML, CDAO, PHYLWS, etc., or integration with TolWeb (I'd be much more excited by integration with PhyLoTA). Just show me the trees, let me find them by taxon, by geography, make it trivial to find my trees, and see what others have done with them (or the data I used).

Regards

Rod


On 3 Feb 2012, at 14:36, Hilmar Lapp wrote:

> 
> On Feb 3, 2012, at 3:00 AM, Roderic Page wrote:
> 
>> I'm reading this thread with a growing sense of horror.
> 
> Actually I'm glad others outside the project are finally getting horrified too. That should help with prioritization :-)
> 
>> At some point TreeBASE needs a radical rethink. A nonSQL document store would make life so much easier, as would cleanly separating the data entry stuff from the data storage and output.
> 
> 
> A wholehearted +1. In fact this is part of what we proposed in the 2011 NSF ABI grant (posted on the evoio.org wiki if you are curious) that was just declined from funding. And I also agree that there are significant barriers in the TreeBASE architecture to engendering outside participation, but I'm afraid the architecture is so entangled right now that it takes dedicated effort to break that up right now, i.e., grant funding.
> 
> 	-hilmar
> -- 
> ===========================================================
> : Hilmar Lapp  -:- Durham, NC -:- informatics.nescent.org :
> ===========================================================
> 
> 
> 

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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....@bi...
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