More arm-waving notes on taxonomic databases. I've started to add data to ChecklistBank and this has got me thinking about the issue of data quality.

Garnett et al. recently published a paper in PLoS Biology that starts with the sentence "Lists of species matter": This paper (one of a forthcoming series) is pretty much the kind of paper I try and avoid reading.

Few things have annoyed be as much as the following post on TAXACOM: I'm trying to work out why this seemingly innocuous post made me so mad. I think this is because I think this fundamentally framing the question the wrong way. Surely the goal is to have a list of names that is global in scope, well documented, and freely usable by all without restriction? Surely we want open and free access to fundamental biodiversity data?