FishBase Lessons Learned

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FishBase Lessons Learned

• Rainer Froese
• IfM-GEOMAR
• rfroese_at_ifm-geomar.de
• December 2004

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Overview

• What is FishBase
• Some statistics on usage
• Lessons learned
• Future plans

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Some Statistics

• What is not used
• is useless
• With modern web statistic software there is no
  excuse
• for not knowning your users

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About 10,000 visitors per month
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Under The Hood

• FishBase Structure

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Under The Hood

• FishBase Structure
• From DataEase to MS Access to MySQL to ???
• From HTML to Cold Fusion to PHP to CMS to ???
• 5 mirrors around the world
• www.ZoneEdit.com for load-balancing

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General Principles

• Keep it simple
• Yes-Attitude
• Be opportunistic
• Give more credit than was expected
• Deal with errors
• Expose data
• Invite, accept and act on criticism
• Compare data
• Use your data

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Design Principles

• Do not over-normalize
• Avoid (hide) codes
• Dedicated fields vs free-text fields
• Science and Data first approach
• Transparency (reference, entered, modified, date)
• Strategic decisions about data (comparative
  advantage, importance, future maintenance)

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Future Plans

• Complete coverage and content
• Improve mapping
• Add more analytical tools
• Move to mobile devices
• Do FishBase for all aquatic species?

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Thanks to the FishBase Team
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Thanks to the FishBase Consortium
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Thanks to our Donors
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Thanks for Listening

• Questions?