Some thoughts about the website

[LienReyserhove]

While strolling through the unified-checklist website, I'm writing down some suggestions. Just some things that pop up in my mind, feel free to integrate or not.

1. I wonder what the intended public is for this website. If it is intended for the broad (scientific) public with limited knowledge, I would add some information in certain parts: e.g.:

• taxonKey can be used to verify manually on GBIF (section 2.3): I would add the URL (i.e. www.gbif.org/species/taxonKey). Maybe also refer to the verbatim page, as the overview page for e.g. Pilosella x brachiata indicates that the species is present in Belgium, but not that the presence of this species is uncertain

2. Section 3: I would add a preview of each of the resulting datasets

3. section 6.3 Unifiy distributions

• What is the reason to use startYear as endYear when no endYear is provided in the unified checklist? (in the first step) I think we need to think about a general strategy for dates because:

  • alien plants: when only one date is available, eventDate is OR start year OR end year (in the case of the alien plants, start year in the unified checklist could just be end year as well)
  • alien fishes: when one date is available: use the year of the publication of the checklist as end year

• sometimes, we have no date information at all. Should also be mentioned in the text somewhere (i.e. what about NA's)

• In the same section, I wonder if it would be possible to give more previews as well, sometimes it's hard to visualise the steps we undertake. A preview could be helpfull here.

[LienReyserhove]

Some more considerations:

1. The summary of steps under e.g. [point 2.4] is a bit abstract if you can't visualize what is happening exactly. In that respect, seeing the code would be very helpfull. Another option is to describe the process more in detail for the reader.

2. Section 3: this section is quite dry...

3. Read verification information (section 4.2): the specification checklist/backbone/accepted statement is confusing, this implies that the file is a summary of all accepted taxa. A suggestion is to use taxonomic status instead of accepted