Folks,
Associated Press is reporting on plans to establish an Encyclopedia of Life combining what is known about every known living species.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/05/08/ap3699046.html
In a whale-sized project, the world's scientists plan to compile everything they know about all of Earth's 1.8 million known species and put it all on one Web site, open to everyone.
The effort, called the Encyclopedia of Life, will include species descriptions, pictures, maps, videos, sound, sightings by amateurs, and links to entire genomes and scientific journal papers. Its first pages of information will be shown Wednesday in Washington where the massive effort is being announced by some of the world's leading institutions. The project will take about 10 years to finish.
"It's an interactive zoo," said James Edwards, who will be the encyclopedia's executive director. Edwards currently helps run a global biodiversity information system.
If the new encyclopedia progresses as planned, it should fill about 300 million pages, which, if lined up end-to-end, would be more than 52,000 miles long, able to stretch twice around the world at the equator.
Two foundations have given $12.5 million to pay for the first 2 1/2 years of the massive effort, but it will be free and accessible to everyone. More in story.
I wonder what its licensing arrangements are or will be.
Regards
Keith Old
Sounds like Wikispecies....
On 5/8/07, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
Folks,
Associated Press is reporting on plans to establish an Encyclopedia of Life combining what is known about every known living species.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/05/08/ap3699046.html
In a whale-sized project, the world's scientists plan to compile everything they know about all of Earth's 1.8 million known species and put it all on one Web site, open to everyone.
The effort, called the Encyclopedia of Life, will include species descriptions, pictures, maps, videos, sound, sightings by amateurs, and links to entire genomes and scientific journal papers. Its first pages of information will be shown Wednesday in Washington where the massive effort is being announced by some of the world's leading institutions. The project will take about 10 years to finish.
"It's an interactive zoo," said James Edwards, who will be the encyclopedia's executive director. Edwards currently helps run a global biodiversity information system.
If the new encyclopedia progresses as planned, it should fill about 300 million pages, which, if lined up end-to-end, would be more than 52,000 miles long, able to stretch twice around the world at the equator.
Two foundations have given $12.5 million to pay for the first 2 1/2 years of the massive effort, but it will be free and accessible to everyone. More in story.
I wonder what its licensing arrangements are or will be.
Regards
Keith Old _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
ikiroid wrote:
On 5/8/07, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
Folks,
Associated Press is reporting on plans to establish an Encyclopedia of Life combining what is known about every known living species.
Sounds like Wikispecies....
Or the (failed, alas) All Species Foundation. And I know there are several successful limited ones, like AntWeb. I wish the Encyclopedia of Life folks the best of luck, but give them a 50/50 chance, as it's a hard and expensive problem to solve well.
William
On 5/8/07, ikiroid ikiroid@gmail.com wrote:
Sounds like Wikispecies....
I was thinking Wikipedia. But I guess it's part Wikispecies, part Wikipedia, and part Wikimedia Commons:
*http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ardea_alba *http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ardea_alba *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Egret
Anthony
On 5/8/07, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
Folks,
Associated Press is reporting on plans to establish an Encyclopedia of Life combining what is known about every known living species.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/05/08/ap3699046.html
In a whale-sized project, the world's scientists plan to compile everything they know about all of Earth's 1.8 million known species and put it all on one Web site, open to everyone.
The effort, called the Encyclopedia of Life, will include species descriptions, pictures, maps, videos, sound, sightings by amateurs, and links to entire genomes and scientific journal papers. Its first pages of information will be shown Wednesday in Washington where the massive effort is being announced by some of the world's leading institutions. The project will take about 10 years to finish.
"It's an interactive zoo," said James Edwards, who will be the encyclopedia's executive director. Edwards currently helps run a global biodiversity information system.
If the new encyclopedia progresses as planned, it should fill about 300 million pages, which, if lined up end-to-end, would be more than 52,000 miles long, able to stretch twice around the world at the equator.
Two foundations have given $12.5 million to pay for the first 2 1/2 years of the massive effort, but it will be free and accessible to everyone. More in story.
I wonder what its licensing arrangements are or will be.
Regards
Keith Old _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 5/8/07, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
Folks,
Associated Press is reporting on plans to establish an Encyclopedia of Life combining what is known about every known living species.
Erik Moeller knows a lot more about this; he is representing the Wikimedia Foundation of this project's Institutional Council: http://www.eol.org/partners.html
-Sage
Keith Old wrote:
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/05/08/ap3699046.html
In a whale-sized project, the world's scientists plan to compile everything they know about all of Earth's 1.8 million known species and put it all on one Web site, open to everyone.
The effort, called the Encyclopedia of Life, will include species descriptions, pictures, maps, videos, sound, sightings by amateurs, and links to entire genomes and scientific journal papers. Its first pages of information will be shown Wednesday in Washington where the massive effort is being announced by some of the world's leading institutions. The project will take about 10 years to finish.
Two foundations have given $12.5 million to pay for the first 2 1/2 years of the massive effort, but it will be free and accessible to everyone.
I know of one organization that could have done just as well or better for a fraction of the price. :-)
Ec
On 0, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net scribbled:
Keith Old wrote:
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/05/08/ap3699046.html
In a whale-sized project, the world's scientists plan to compile everything they know about all of Earth's 1.8 million known species and put it all on one Web site, open to everyone.
The effort, called the Encyclopedia of Life, will include species descriptions, pictures, maps, videos, sound, sightings by amateurs, and links to entire genomes and scientific journal papers. Its first pages of information will be shown Wednesday in Washington where the massive effort is being announced by some of the world's leading institutions. The project will take about 10 years to finish.
Two foundations have given $12.5 million to pay for the first 2 1/2 years of the massive effort, but it will be free and accessible to everyone.
I know of one organization that could have done just as well or better for a fraction of the price. :-)
Ec
That's actually a good question. Somone mentioned, I think, that Erik might know why they aren't basing it off WikiSpecies (which I'd heard was remarkably underappreciated and comprehensive).
If they don't have any specific ideological objections, I do hope they use WikiSpecies's database - it always distresses me when I see things like Project Gutenberg and WikiSource: they're doing such similar things, and even with the duplication of work and other inefficiencies, they're already doing great work. Imagine what they could do after they merged!
-- Gwern Inquiring minds want to know.
On 5/8/07, Gwern Branwen gwern0@gmail.com wrote:
On 0, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net scribbled:
Keith Old wrote:
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/05/08/ap3699046.html
In a whale-sized project, the world's scientists plan to compile
everything
they know about all of Earth's 1.8 million known species and put it all
on
one Web site, open to everyone.
The effort, called the Encyclopedia of Life, will include species descriptions, pictures, maps, videos, sound, sightings by amateurs, and links to entire genomes and scientific journal papers. Its first pages
of
information will be shown Wednesday in Washington where the massive
effort
is being announced by some of the world's leading institutions. The
project
will take about 10 years to finish.
Two foundations have given $12.5 million to pay for the first 2 1/2
years of
the massive effort, but it will be free and accessible to everyone.
I know of one organization that could have done just as well or better for a fraction of the price. :-)
Ec
That's actually a good question. Somone mentioned, I think, that Erik might know why they aren't basing it off WikiSpecies (which I'd heard was remarkably underappreciated and comprehensive).
If they don't have any specific ideological objections, I do hope they use WikiSpecies's database - it always distresses me when I see things like Project Gutenberg and WikiSource: they're doing such similar things, and even with the duplication of work and other inefficiencies, they're already doing great work. Imagine what they could do after they merged!
-- Gwern Inquiring minds want to know.
Well, if you look at the "Demonstration pages": http://www.eol.org/demonstration.html they all list "Wikipedia" as a source, along with others.
Presumably, if they're willing to use Wikipedia, they'd be willing to use Wikispecies. (Also, if they mean "source" in the "we took text from there" way, then presumably the contents of the Encyclopedia of Earth will need to be under the GFDL). As someone else noted in this thread, there's been a lot of other efforts to build biodiversity databases over the years. One can only hope that this new project will build on existing attempts..
Also, I'm intrigued by the "novice-expert" slider that is visible on the demonstration pages, which apparently "Customizes EOL to suit different categories of users. A primary school student might only see the vernacular name of the organism; more advanced students might see the vernacular name, the Latin Name, and nomenclatural and associated information." I wish we had that for Wikipedia... "ten page biography of famous scientist too much to digest? Here, try the leading paragraph and infobox version." Maybe we could make a cruft/non-cruft slider as well, so those articles falling below one's cruft threshold would disappear....
-- phoebe
Hello all,
I am indeed a member of the Institutional Council of the EOL project and am in Washington DC right now. I will attend the public press conference tomorrow. Today I've been giving their Board a lot of background on licensing issues, an overview of wiki technology, and background on our projects.
EOL will use NameBank for the taxon names, which has ~9.5 million records. I doubt, honestly, that Wikispecies is of much use to them in its present form, but have given a brief summary of the project regardless. The mock-ups contain references to Wikipedia, and they are very interested in using Wikipedia articles as part of the encyclopedic component. I've strongly pushed for making changes directly in Wikipedia wherever possible, and we'll see where that leads. And, as you can expect, I've also made an argument for permissive (WMF-compatible) licensing. Beyond that, I cannot say much about the content of the discussions for confidentiality reasons.
This is a very exciting project and I'm glad that we've made a connection. I am very optimistic about its future.
On 5/8/07, Keith Old keithold@gmail.com wrote:
Folks,
Associated Press is reporting on plans to establish an Encyclopedia of Life combining what is known about every known living species.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/05/08/ap3699046.html
In a whale-sized project, the world's scientists plan to compile everything they know about all of Earth's 1.8 million known species and put it all on one Web site, open to everyone.
The effort, called the Encyclopedia of Life, will include species descriptions, pictures, maps, videos, sound, sightings by amateurs, and links to entire genomes and scientific journal papers. Its first pages of information will be shown Wednesday in Washington where the massive effort is being announced by some of the world's leading institutions. The project will take about 10 years to finish.
"It's an interactive zoo," said James Edwards, who will be the encyclopedia's executive director. Edwards currently helps run a global biodiversity information system.
If the new encyclopedia progresses as planned, it should fill about 300 million pages, which, if lined up end-to-end, would be more than 52,000 miles long, able to stretch twice around the world at the equator.
Two foundations have given $12.5 million to pay for the first 2 1/2 years of the massive effort, but it will be free and accessible to everyone. More in story.
I wonder what its licensing arrangements are or will be.
Regards
Keith Old _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l