Response to "Proposal for further development online knowledge base on Sciaroidea [Fungus Gnats Online]"

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The summary and suggestion for further development of this site made by Blagoderov and Rulik, makes for interesting reading. I think that the most important improvement that can be made to this site, is improving the user interface to make it easier to change and add content. For example editing the bibliography, to correct miss spellings of author names and deleting duplicated entries is time consuming and cumbersome.

In the species pages in the description part, I would like to have the possibility to place general comments. The current layout is very specific and it is not easy to know where to put more general remarks. Also check boxes for distribution based on countries and biogeographical region would be nice.

Online keys would be a great addition to the site. Four different solutions are listed:
• Static pages with traditional dichotomous keys
• Static pages with pictorial keys and lots of links
• Mindmaps
• Viewer for DELTA files embedded on pages
A traditional dichotomous key, would not take advantage of the possibilities of the web and computers, and I don’t think this is the way forward. I’m not sure what mindmaps and DELTA files are, but I would like to see something like the keys from LUCID.

I think a workshop would be necessary to extend the use of this site from a source of bibliographical information to a vibrant place for taxonomic discussion.

Eirik Rindal

Tue, 2008-07-01 10:38 -- Anonymous (not verified)

public://picture-82.jpg
Submitted by br on

Hi Eirik,

thanks for responding. I just would like to mention, that LUCID is a famous tool for developing keys, but unfortunately it is not free. Current version costs round about $650,-

bjoern

Submitted by vblago on

NaviKey is a very good idea, but I have to check if it is possible to use on the site. At the moment Java scripts are disabled due to security reasons

Vladimir Blagoderov

Submitted by vblago on

DELTA has almost the same functionality as LUCID, unfortunately only works in Windows, while LUCID is written on Java and cross-platform. They are both fine as stand-alone systems, but suitable for collaboration

Vladimir Blagoderov

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