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