[Taxacom] Machine-tagging Flickr images with taxonomic names

[Andy Mabbett]

In message <80D3F7FE-0D40-4079-81E3-DDB8A3F89ABB at bio.gla.ac.uk>, Roderic
Page <r.page at bio.gla.ac.uk> writes

>Flickr allows you to tag photos with tags that include spaces, but
>collapses them when saving the tag. You can still retrieve the photo
>with the tag that includes white space. For example
>
>http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/diomedeaexulans/
>
>and
>
>http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/diomede%20aexulans/
>
>retrieve albatross photos. I can insert spaces pretty much wherever I
>like and still get the same pictures. Hence, users could still  recover
>pictures using the original binomial tag (i.e., the species  name).

That's OK so far as it stands, but the issue is that it can't be
revered. We can't know (without prior knowledge) know whether:

        diomedeaexulans

refers to "diomede aexulans" or "diome deaexulans" or whatever.

This could be resolved by prohibiting (in future; and renaming
existing-) duplicates, and doing a database lookup, or using two machine
tags:

        taxonomy:binomial:diomedeaexulans

        taxonomy:genus:diomede

where subtracting the second from the first gives the specific.

I think that's the pattern I shall use, and recommend, from now on.
Here's a blog post:

<http://pigsonthewing.wordpress.com/2008/02/07/taxonomic-machine-tags/>

-- 
Andy Mabbett

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