On 26/02/2008, Steven Walling <steven.walling(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Still seems to be either slow or down completely.
"...our exciting journey to document all species of life on Earth."?
Isn't
quite uncontroversial among scientific circles to note that we haven't even
documented a large part of life on earth, much less enough to write
encyclopedia articles on each and every species? Seems a little bit of an
overblown goal.
They plan to add species as they are discovered.
Considering that "The immense amount of
information in the encyclopedia is
being drawn from a variety of sources, including several existing specialist
databases such as AmphibiaWeb and FishBase.", it seems to me they are just
taking advantage of other people's hard work rather than building their own
encyclopedia.
Could be argued that we do that everytime we cite someone. Then there is Rambot.
As for, "The project will solicit the help of
users to submit photos and
information for assessment by an authentication team.", sounds just like the
reason Nupedia failed and why Citizendium doesn't even have an article on
everyday species such as sheep.
They have $50m funding. Buys then a lot of requests for images. I
suggest we respond by raising the bar and requesting users submit
videos of species.
I just don't generally see why this would be
engaging as a resource or as a
participatory endeavor, personally.
It is meant to appeal more to traditional academics.
--
geni