James R. Johnson wrote:
Would the w-species give EVERY species a place, even
extinct ones? And how
would species of unknown or questionable placement work (dinosaurs to birds,
or perhaps dimetrodons)? Hopefully w-species could come up with an ordering
system, so that if one person were to edit the species' page, say the genus
changed, it would change elsewhere on the w-species automatically? Say homo
sapiens were renamed to jimbo sapiens. Then all the links or redirects
would alter accordingly, perhaps through a webbot or automatic crawler?
Extinct species are recognized species. (There was even a "Journal of
Improbable Research" article on the taxonomy of Barney.) This would be
the same with or without a Wikispecies. Species with doubtful placement
are a fact of life, and what we do won't change that.
Experimenting with the automatic changes as you suggest is the kind of
interesting thing that comes more easily in a specialized project.
Ec