[Taxacom] Goodbye NBII web site January 15

[Stephen Thorpe]

yes, but every nontrivial amount is made up of lots and lots of trivial amounts, and I expect this thing isn't the only money saving cut in the US ...
 
however, I expect that there will always be (something like) 1 million people in the world willing to donate 10 bucks to Wikimedia every year (mostly, of course, aimed at Wikipedia (with its "very important" articles on celebrities, film, and TV shows!), but Wikispecies also runs off the same donations) ...
 
Stephen


________________________________
From: Geoffrey Read <gread at actrix.gen.nz>
To: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> 
Cc: stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz 
Sent: Saturday, 7 January 2012 5:01 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Goodbye NBII web site January 15


Governments run on public donations too. Compulsory ones so that  services
of public good are provided.  Seven million must be a trivial sum in US
govt tax income terms, and it is somewhat disquieting to see this
organisation fail to persist, despite its very important-sounding title. 
Quote "As a result of the Program's termination, no single, integrated
point of access to federal and non-federal biological and biodiversity
information within the United States will exist."


Geoff

On Sat, January 7, 2012 1:22 pm, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
> by contrast, Wikimedia had no difficulty again this year getting what $$$
> it needs to run from public donations ...
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Geoff Read <gread at actrix.gen.nz>
> To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
> Sent: Saturday, 7 January 2012 1:04 PM
> Subject: [Taxacom] Goodbye NBII web site January 15
>
> Greetings,
>
> A situation probably better known to USA members, but both of interest and
> less familiar to the rest of us. With one week to go before the USA
> National Biological Information Infrastructure (NBII) public face
> disappears, and associated web utilities such as the taxonomy database
> ITIS disperse elsewhere, and may or may not be harder to find and less
> well maintained, now might be a good time to read the FAQ sketching out
> what supposedly will happen.
>
> http://www.nbii.gov/portal/server.pt/community/termination_of_nbii_program/2057/termination_faqs/7650
>
> In FY2010, the NBII budget was $7 million, and now is zero in FY2012.