On Tuesday 24 August 2004 13:19, Benedikt Mandl wrote:
What we should define as a target: Wikispecies should become the most extensive directory of its kind and not specialise exclusivly on a particular group of species (as fishbase does, for example) nor users
(NOT
for scientists only, for example).
Given this target I fail to see what the difference between wikispecies and wikipedia is or should be. It would have made _some_ sense to me if the audience would be different, e.g., if wikispecies targets scientists rather than "normal" users AND if wouldn't be possible to serve both audiences within wikipedia.
I am doing physics so my knowledge about biology is limited, but from what I read here, in particular from the above defined goals, I am afraid that there will be a big overlap of wikipedia and wikispecies. And I am even more afraid that the wikispecies project will kill parts of the ToL project. Thus the suggestion of wikispecies looks more like an attempt of a fork to me. Where fork means a fork of the contributers.
best regards, Marco
The defined target refered to the question whether wikispecies should cover all species that were described or not. It would be wonderful if this was possible, but yet it is too big of a project to define - others have done that before and failed (see the busted http://www.all-species.org/).
In terms of users: I think that there actually would be some overlapping information of wikipedia and wikispecies - for that reason a stron connection between the two would be very important and beneficial for both. On the other hand I think that the niche for a specifically biology dedicated, taxonomic database such as wikispecies is big and the potential potential applications different enough to justify the existance of a wikispecies in addition to the wikipedia.
When it comes to biologists to contribute contents, I am sure that it will be MUCH easier to convince them to work on a species directory with pure bio-applications rather than a general encyclopedia. Which doesn't mean that wikipedia won't benefit from wikispecies - just the opposite.
Benedikt