I have read all this huha about Wikispecies and there is one thing that may also be considered about the democratic merits of wikimedia. Mav acts ever so angy, he may even be angry. He says that it is autocratic and that there should first be a consensus.
Well, I can remember that I have tried my darndest to get the en:wikipedia resource "Three of Life" to consider working towards a unified Taxobox that is acceptable to *all* Wikipedia. I was basically ignored with the argument, "see our arguments in the archives it was a hard slug to get this far we do not want any more of this". I have presented arguments about things that were wrong for internationalisation eg [[Animal]]ia in stead of [[Animalia]], I stated that the mentioning of "Bionominal name" does not add anything as it is inherent in "Scientific classification". The only result was "we have voted on this, this is our consensus".
I have been constructive and introduced templates with [[en:Ruffe]] that were developped at [[nl:Pos]] and I was really happy to see them adopted in the ToL. It was possible to get adopted as there was not already voted on. When I had taxonomic or other questions, I am happy to say there were always great people willing and able to help me out. So it is not all doom and gloom. The point I am making is, the en:ToL has proven to not really being open to cooperation and willing to make changes to its current practices in order to achieve better cooperation. As they say in Holland "past performance is no guarantee for the future". ;)
So what is WikiSpecies going to contain: the aim is to have all scientific taxonomic information about all species/taxons. Consider this: my database only about succulents is 80Mb of relational data. There are plants in my database that have more than 10 valid names all with authors, publications etc. This is not content that you want to have in wikipedia as it would bore people to death. Having Wikispecies in the Commons is not a good idea as there is a need to have software made for Wikispecies that will make it for the forseeable future an experimental resource. Commons is an experimental resource at this time as well, but it will be a cornerstone to all Wikimedia projects and it is not a good idea to burden it will all kinds of extra stuff.
When having all taxonomic information in Wikispecies, references to encyclopedic information can be added with the usual hyperlinks. This means that the Wikipedia will be a resource to Wikispecies. The idea that all the taxonomic information should be in the Commons has no technical merit either. The essence is that we will be able to link to it and use it as an available resource. The location of data is technical, not really a concern to me as a user and with universal login promissed for Mediawiki 1.4 soon not to be relevant either.
One of the resources I hope Wikispecies will bring is a taxobox that looks the way a wikipedia wants it to look with all taxonomic information relevant to the applicable system (eg sensu Cronquist) with pictures stored in the Commons. This will mean that de:wikipedia will not show "regnum" information, en:wikipedia will have their "Binominal name" tag and nl:wikipedia will have the tag for the taxon involved in stead of the "Binominal name" tag.
One other function I expect Wikispecies will bring is opening up this data for all who want it. By publishing content and changes in a format like XML, people and organisations can benefit from the work done on Wikispecies. I also expect Wikispecies to be open to changes from trusted institutions. So when an institution like IPNI for instance publishes a researched update on specific content we apply this change and we will attribute this change to IPNI.
For the record and I repeat what I have said on many occasions: The en:ToL is a wonderfull resource many great people have contributed to it. I have much admiration for it and the effort involved.
Thanks, GerardM