Taxoboxes. - Wikipedia-l

25 Aug 2004

One of the better longtime contributors on nl:wikipedia 
[[nl:Gebruiker:Roepers]] mentioned today that he is not willing to spend 
time anymore on taxoboxes. The time needed to create them takes too long 
and he said that somebody else can do it. If this does not happen he 
will not mind.

The reasons he gives are:
"* There is no agreement among taxonomists about what is correct. It is 
hard to express these descrepancies.
 *Creating a taxobox is hard even for people with experience
 *They take up much room and they replace text.
 *New Taxobox technology continues to be created, the old ones are not 
upgraded to the latest version
 *Creating a taxobox is dreary work and, who is interested in them anyway."

Copying a taxobox from en: to nl: takes a lot of time. It would be best 
to have one taxobox that serves us all.

What is needed to create a truly standard Taxobox?

The Taxobox has to be language independent.
The Taxobox has to be acceptable to multiple wikipedia
The diverse wikipedia have to be willing to work together to create this 
standard Taxobox.

At this moment in time people turn there back on ToL things in other 
wikipedia because things are not as easy as they can be.
At the same time we cry wolf because valuable resources may end up 
somewhere else.

My challenge to all wikipedia people interested in biology and the ToL: 
make taxoboxes so easy that it is just a matter of picking things up and 
dropping them in the appropriate place. Make it usable for great people 
like Roepers !!

Thanks,
   GerardM