Stan Shebs wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
No it is not since the Commons is a common place to host data and files
that
are used by more than one wiki. It therefore helps to bind us together,
not
divide us.
It was my understanding that Wikispecies is to be a common place to host species data that is used by more than one wiki. So why doesn't Wikispecies help to bind us together?
I think people are using "data" to mean different things. If it means language-independent data (maximum recorded length, say), along with a way to splice it into each language's article, then great, it would be just as beneficial as sharing images; each language WP would get consistent statistics, which would eliminate a major maintenance load, and speed creation of articles for all the languages - just mention the common taxobox, or common general characteristics, and boom, Bulgarian gets content just as good as English.
If Wikispeces data means quasi-articles with text in some language, that has much more undesirable forking potential.
Stan
Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
Hear, Hear !! WikiSpecies will be mainly in the biological language of choise, therefore it will be mainly English. It is most definetly not the idea to have quasi-articles. It is certainly the intention to link to wikipedias for encyclopedic information. There is no wish for creating what is already there. Propably resources like WikiCommons will be used to store pictures in exactly the same way as with Wikipedia. Maybe WikiSource will be used for fixed scientific texts. Too much speculation is not good either.
Definetly, the idea is not to fork and the idea is to share strengths and overcome weaknesses.
Thanks, GerardM