The wiki is there to allow discussion to take place and to evolve what features are needed. Like the Wikimedia Commons, the software does not yet match what the project needs, but we felt it would be beneficial to start with a wiki for discussion on the project until the time that the needed features can be implemented.
This is most definitely not a fork of Wikipedia. Wikispecies is more about collecting data than writing articles. This data will be saved in a way that allows all Wikipedias, not just the English one, to use the data. As a project, Wikispecies has different aims to Wikipedia. It is aimed at the needs of scientific users rather than general users. Integrating Wikispecies into Wikimedia prevents a fork.
We believe the project may have a good impact on the way we are perceived by academics, which according to another thread on this list right now, a lot of people seem to think would be a good thing.
The board met at the start of this month, and the notes from this meeting are on Meta and the Foundation wiki. Four members voted to support the following points:
1. We set up the WikiSpecies wiki for biologists to begin organizing the project. 2. We ask that Benedikt transfer the domain name to Wikimedia. 3. We propose that as the software is developed, it should work to strongly support integration with wikipedia, to help avoid duplication of effort. 4. We ask the participants on wikispecies to particularly think about how their work should differ from a generalist encyclopedia
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Board_meetings/5_September_2004
I apologize to those who had not seen the above report already. Perhaps we need to find a way of ensuring that people who do not follow either of those wikis are aware of meetings that take place such as this one.
Angela