--- "James R. Johnson" modean52@comcast.net wrote:

I'm all for it - sounds pretty cool. Could there possibly be redirects from the Wikipedia to the Wikispecies, or vice versa? Then Wikispecies could hold all the species info, and free up wikipedia space for other stuff (don't know what, but it could). Would it be like current wikis as in en.wikispecies.org, de.wikispecies.org, ang.wikispecies.org?

Absolutely not! Wikipedia is the place to have articles on species - not a separate project.

-- mav

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How would the articles / species directory entries differ? Would the species entry focus on genetic similarities between species, evolutionary genealogy, or what?

James

-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Benedikt Mandl Sent: Monday, August 23, 2004 1:53 PM To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: RE: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

I totally disagree; I am sure that a lot of information will be overlapping and therefore, the two projects should remain connected. Nevertheless, a species directory would serve a different purpose than the wikipedia as such and have a significantly different structure (as seen in the draft at my last e-mail) to allow highly specific search functions.

I already got a lot of supportive e-mails by a range of people - and that is eventually what counts for a wiki project, to my understanding. There is a need for an extensive species directory, and I will keep asking for support!

Benedikt

--- "James R. Johnson" modean52@comcast.net wrote:

...

I'm all for it - sounds pretty cool. Could there possibly be redirects

from

...

the Wikipedia to the Wikispecies, or vice versa? Then Wikispecies could hold all the species info, and free up wikipedia space for other stuff (don't know what, but it could). Would it be like current wikis as in en.wikispecies.org, de.wikispecies.org,

ang.wikispecies.org?

Absolutely not! Wikipedia is the place to have articles on species - not a separate project.

-- mav

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For a wikispecies, I would expect to be able to click on the Kingdom (Animala), Phylum (Chordata), Subphylum (Vertebrata), and so on so I can narrow down progressively to homo sapiens, homo neanderthalensis, homo erectus, etc., and on the each further down level (i.e. Chordata, then Vertebrata), the most notable species would have higher links on that page. Is that what you mean by category?

James

-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Mayer Sent: Monday, August 23, 2004 3:42 PM To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: RE: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

--- Benedikt Mandl benedikt.mandl@gmx.at wrote:

I totally disagree; I am sure that a lot of information will be overlapping and therefore, the two projects should remain connected. Nevertheless, a species directory would serve a different purpose than the wikipedia as such and have a significantly different structure (as seen in the draft at my last e-mail) to allow highly specific search

functions.

Use categories to create the directory. Done. All we need is something that all projects should have anyway: an advanced search capability so that users can search within any category or group of categories. This will be very useful for *all* areas that Wikipedia covers.

I already got a lot of supportive e-mails by a range of people - and that is eventually what counts for a wiki project, to my understanding. There is a need for an extensive species directory, and I

will keep asking for support!

Your understanding is wrong since well-reasoned and strong opposition often creates a situation where no consensus can be formed.

You are more than welcome to create Wikispecies anytime you wish. But don't expect it to be a Wikimedia project without a great deal of justification that 1) It advances our goals 2) It does not harm existing projects 3) The idea cannot be incorporated into an existing project (sometimes some technical issues need to be fixed to make that possible)

-- mav

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James R. Johnson wrote:

For a wikispecies, I would expect to be able to click on the Kingdom (Animala), Phylum (Chordata), Subphylum (Vertebrata), and so on so I can narrow down progressively to homo sapiens, homo neanderthalensis, homo erectus, etc., and on the each further down level (i.e. Chordata, then Vertebrata), the most notable species would have higher links on that page. Is that what you mean by category?

James

Start at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Animalia and keep working down the subcategories for examples.

A typical category chain goes:

(Fundamental -> Knowledge -> Science -> Natural sciences -> Biology -> Life) -> Animalia -> Chordates -> Mammals -> Carnivora -> Canines -> Dogs -> Dog breeds -> (185 articles about dog breeds)

My wikitime this week has been categorizing all mammals in a sensible fashion. The chosen categories (typically at the KPCO and F levels) have been extensively thought out at [[Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Tree of Life]] so comments are welcome there.

Pete/Pcb21

--- "James R. Johnson" modean52@comcast.net wrote:

For a wikispecies, I would expect to be able to click on the Kingdom (Animala), Phylum (Chordata), Subphylum (Vertebrata), and so on so I can narrow down progressively to homo sapiens, homo neanderthalensis, homo erectus, etc., and on the each further down level (i.e. Chordata, then Vertebrata), the most notable species would have higher links on that page. Is that what you mean by category?

Taxoboxes are a standard part of every WikiProject Tree of Life article. The only time there are breaks in the navigation are when an intermediate article does not yet exist for that taxon.

But your example already exists. Start at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote and work your way down.

As time passes there will be few and fewer breaks until all taxa are covered (hopefully every species known to science will also be covered).

There could also be a category for each taxon, but that needs to be worked out first.

-- Daniel

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Looking through the wikipedia...

Going through the wp, I'm finding that a wikispecies, in my humble opinion, should get a go as a starter project, to see what happens. The organization, I'd vote to organize by the taxonomic names, in Latin form (deuterostomata page, not "deuterostomes"), and have whatever everyone thinks should be on there. I'd be happy to help out with organizing it, doing some articles on homo, australopithecus, and dinosauria (my favorite subjects in biology). Perhaps also in the main Wikispecies page, there should be an outline of evolution, and the current theories regarding that, and how the taxonomic system itself implies the evolutionary nature of life itself. A link to www.talkorigins.org may also be useful on the main page as well.

James

-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of James R. Johnson Sent: Monday, August 23, 2004 10:04 PM To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: RE: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

Looks essentially what a wikispecies should look like, I guess. I guess a w-species would focus more on the biology, history, genealogy, genetics, or what, so that it's different from the w-pedia? My only thought was to click on the taxonomic names to go down to what you wanted, with perhaps shortcuts along the way to more common or popular animals/plants, etc.

James

-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Mayer Sent: Monday, August 23, 2004 9:57 PM To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: RE: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

--- "James R. Johnson" modean52@comcast.net wrote:

For a wikispecies, I would expect to be able to click on the Kingdom (Animala), Phylum (Chordata), Subphylum (Vertebrata), and so on so I can narrow down progressively to homo sapiens, homo neanderthalensis, homo erectus, etc., and on the each further down level (i.e. Chordata, then Vertebrata), the most notable species would have higher links on that

page.

Is that what you mean by category?

Taxoboxes are a standard part of every WikiProject Tree of Life article. The only time there are breaks in the navigation are when an intermediate article does not yet exist for that taxon.

But your example already exists. Start at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote and work your way down.

As time passes there will be few and fewer breaks until all taxa are covered (hopefully every species known to science will also be covered).

There could also be a category for each taxon, but that needs to be worked out first.

-- Daniel

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James R. Johnson wrote:

Looking through the wikipedia...

Going through the wp, I'm finding that a wikispecies, in my humble opinion, should get a go as a starter project, to see what happens. The organization, I'd vote to organize by the taxonomic names, in Latin form (deuterostomata page, not "deuterostomes"), and have whatever everyone thinks should be on there.

Formal taxonomic names is the only way that would work in a multilingual project.

Ec

Daniel Mayer wrote:

...

Looks essentially what a wikispecies should look like, I guess. I guess a w-species would focus more on the biology, history, genealogy, genetics, or what, so that it's different from the w-pedia?

All that should be covered in the Wikipedia article.

My impression is that Wikispecies' goal is to catalog *every* existing (and extinct?) species. We're talking about, what, hundred thousands of articles. This is similar to documenting every town and village, no matter what the size, and such attempts have historically not been appreciated within Wikipedia. This is why I think Wikispecies should be developed separately.

Consider another hypothetical project: Wikibibliography, that catalogs and reviews all books ever printed, which would be something like the OCLC WorldCat on an open content basis. Any such project has goals that have a rather small overlap with that of Wikipedia. However, that overlap (a few thousand articles) might be interesting enough that compatible licenses and some coordination could be useful.

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

--- Benedikt Mandl benedikt.mandl@gmx.at wrote:

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.

OKay - you first state that others have tried and failed. Then you state that it would better to fork this aspect of Wikipedia into a separate project while maintaining overlap. How is dividing the potential workforce between two projects going to be successful?

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.

Because Wikipedia is not paper, it is far more than a general encyclopedia - it is a collection of many inter-related and connected encyclopedias. From the Wikipedia one could derive a great many specialist encyclopedias by selection alone. That is one reason why categories are so important and why the WikiReader concept will work. Again, you have noted another project that tried to specialize and failed.

As a biologist you should be well-aware of the dangers of overspecialization. Species that overspecialize are very vulnerable to extinction due to the fact that changes in its environment will leave it with adaptations that cannot exploit those changes.

-- mav

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--- Till Westermayer till@tillwe.de wrote:

What do you think of the proposal I sketched out somewhere further up in this thread -- to make Wikispecies not a different database, but only a different interface on the same db, maybe using additional tables, indices?

I think it is an interesting idea that should be explored. Forking is out of the question since it divides the contributor base. Other than ec's idea of providing keys (which is really something that Wikibooks should do), I have not seen any data proposed to be put into this project that could not be added to Wikipedia.

Improving Wikipedia is the key here.

-- mav

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I understand Mav's reservations, even though I'm for a wikispecies. Why don't we simply have a trial w-species on that wikispecies.org site, try out a few interface designs, and back-end stuff, and see if it'll work? That way, it won't be a wikiproject, but it will still exist and let people use it, see if it's popular/used enough, and if it gets the go-ahead from Media-Wiki, move whatever was done over to Media-Wiki.

James

-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Benedikt Mandl Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 5:07 AM To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

--- Benedikt Mandl benedikt.mandl@gmx.at wrote:

...

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/).

Daniel Mayer wrote: OKay - you first state that others have tried and failed.

Great - then let's have a look why "ALL species" failed: 1.) They started with a lot of noise, collected a lot of money and several people as full term staff 2.) They rented offices as head quarters and hired experts to do some programming for a search engine 3.) They wasted money on meetings, conventions and media events without realising that they were - due to their organisational structure - totally dependent on financial confidence 4.) The donations decreased after the dot-com crash 5.) Their targets were simply insane - a website for every existing species within a human generation sounds nice in "New Scientist", but lacks of feasibility 6.) They busted - much ado about nothing

I don't see any mistake that Wikispecies would make in a similar manner. Another thing we can learn from www.all-species.org: there is a whole list of the most eminent taxonomists, all of them supporting the idea of a central database of species, indicating an urgent need for that. They all took on the patronage (whatever that means in "ALL species" terms). Mav: HOW MANY OF THEM DO YOU THINK SUPPORT A GENERAL ENCYCLOPEDIA? How many of them already support the ToL in public?

We need a seperat approach to the species project in addition to wikipedia. This is the only way to attract specialist authors and users. Mav, you made it clear that you don't like wikispecies. Many other people disagree with you and I think you should respect their wish for a wikispecies without coming up with inappropriate brabbling about a "war".

Benedikt

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--- "James R. Johnson" modean52@comcast.net wrote:

I understand Mav's reservations, even though I'm for a wikispecies. Why don't we simply have a trial w-species on that wikispecies.org site, try out a few interface designs, and back-end stuff, and see if it'll work? That way, it won't be a wikiproject, but it will still exist and let people use it, see if it's popular/used enough, and if it gets the go-ahead from Media-Wiki, move whatever was done over to Media-Wiki.

That is what the Wikimedia Commons is for.

-- mav

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--- Magnus Manske magnus.manske@web.de wrote:

Really? I was under the impression it should become a repository for free images and multimedia files.

Or do you mean playing with the interface? We can do that too.

I mean that the Commons should host data that is shared by various Wikimedia projects. Storing a single copy of all taxobox and element data (just two examples) would be a great use of the Commons.

-- mav

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Daniel Mayer a écrit:

--- Benedikt Mandl benedikt.mandl@gmx.at wrote:

...

I don't see any mistake that Wikispecies would make in a similar manner. Another thing we can learn from www.all-species.org: there is a whole list of the most eminent taxonomists, all of them supporting the idea of a central database of species, indicating an urgent need for that. They all took on the patronage (whatever that means in "ALL species" terms). Mav: HOW MANY OF THEM DO YOU THINK SUPPORT A GENERAL ENCYCLOPEDIA? How many of them already support the ToL in public?

You must first demonstrate that such functionality could not be added to Wikipedia (which is *NOT* a general encyclopedia but a collection of many specialized ones). Several people have already proposed ways to do *exactly* that.

-- Daniel

Just for the record, I think Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia. ant

Daniel Mayer a écrit:

--- Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:

...

Just for the record, I think Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia. ant

Just for the record, you are mistaken. Have you seen all the niche topics we cover in great detail?

-- mav

It is *not* because they exist that I approve them. My thoughts still have the right to be mine, and I do not believe you have the right to tell me that my thoughts are mistakes. A personal opinion is never a mistake, what would be a mistake here would be to force this opinion on others.

My feeling is that Wikipedia *should* be a general encyclopedia, but I am certainly not gonna remove great articles which go into details. Of course not.

Allow me to not necessarily agree by default with what is currently done.

We obviously do not have the same feeling toward what Wikipedia should be exactly. On some points, we have consensus, such as Wikipedia is not a forum of discussion. On others, it is not so obvious. The claim en.wikipedia is not a dictionnary is not a claim I personnally recognise as valid, because the french tradition is to mix dictionnaries and encyclopedia much more than english-speaking people do. As far as I am concerned, all encyclopedic articles should contain dictionnary information.

However, some people do not think so and I recognise they are benefits to the existence of wiktionnaries as well, mostly for translation I think. Still, the two projects, encyclopedia and wiktionnaries are strongly overlapping sometimes, and *two* projects exist nonetheless. And I saw very few people objecting to the wiktionary existence, nor to the overlap.

Consequently, let me repeat I think Wikipedia SHOULD be a general encyclopedia, and articles thought for rather general public, ie, avoid going in length into jargon and very detailed information. Which is why I am not entirely happy with the idea of filling up the article on the tiger with all the information we are talking about. An article on tiger should be kept relativement simple itself.

I perfectly agree for detailed semi-professional articles to stay in Wikipedia. I wrote a couple of them. However, they should be rather in separate articles, the main one staying readable for most readers. The more detailed ones being seen as "to go further".

If you fill up the tiger article with very detailed information, you will flood the average reader. If the detailed information is in another article, more specialised, only the specialist will go and read it, and the casual reader will not get scared. The detailed article could be on Wikipedia or on another project, it does not matter very much, as long as the two projects are tightly linked. But all info in one article is just a bad idea. Imho.

Anthere

Much of what apogr wrote is beyond me, but I was moved by this distillation of key problems:

The problems, as I see them, include a) uneven use of "scale" b) no check for completeness on a particular level

I find these to be pervasive problems, both for WP as a whole (in creating projects, defining category-sets, identifying key subject areas), for each of its subprojects (in creating article-lists, identifying goals of equal importance, covering an entire topic), and for each individual article (in balancing detail across aspects of an article, maintaining consistent perspective, and maintaining a connection with other articles at higher and lower levels of detail).

+sj+

b) it is a semi-finished colouring book with clolours of uneven intensity c) it is a number of diligent tube-sighted people caught in the process of lace-making

ps - these gems should surely go on the list of [[what wikipedia is]]...

_ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]

--- Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:

Consequently, let me repeat I think Wikipedia SHOULD be a general encyclopedia, and articles thought for rather general public, ie, avoid going in length into jargon and very detailed information.

Of course. But that is not what I meant by saying that Wikipedia is not a general encyclopedia. I have an encyclopedia about cats, for example, that anybody with a junior high school education could grasp (it includes articles on reproduction, anatomy, behavior, care, every breed, etc). It is a specialized encyclopedia that is accessible to a general audience. See my distinction?

Which is why I am not entirely happy with the idea of filling up the article on the tiger with all the information we are talking about. An article on tiger should be kept relativement simple itself.

Who is going to do that? If the biology-related info starts to overwhelm an article then that text should be summarized and a [[Biology of tigers]] article created to host the more detailed information. No need for a separate project to do that! :)

I perfectly agree for detailed semi-professional articles to stay in Wikipedia. I wrote a couple of them. However, they should be rather in separate articles, the main one staying readable for most readers. The more detailed ones being seen as "to go further".

Yes! Exactly my point (see above).

If you fill up the tiger article with very detailed information, you will flood the average reader. If the detailed information is in another article, more specialised, only the specialist will go and read it, and the casual reader will not get scared. The detailed article could be on Wikipedia or on another project, it does not matter very much, as long as the two projects are tightly linked. But all info in one article is just a bad idea. Imho.

Other than the 'other project' part, I agree with you 100%. I also apologize for being curt - the prospect of a fork caused a great deal of worry in me and I over-reacted by not watching the tone of my responses.

-- mav

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Lars Aronsson a écrit:

Daniel Mayer wrote:

...

...

Looks essentially what a wikispecies should look like, I guess. I guess a w-species would focus more on the biology, history, genealogy, genetics, or what, so that it's different from the w-pedia?

All that should be covered in the Wikipedia article.

My impression is that Wikispecies' goal is to catalog *every* existing (and extinct?) species. We're talking about, what, hundred thousands of articles. This is similar to documenting every town and village, no matter what the size, and such attempts have historically not been appreciated within Wikipedia. This is why I think Wikispecies should be developed separately.

Consider another hypothetical project: Wikibibliography, that catalogs and reviews all books ever printed, which would be something like the OCLC WorldCat on an open content basis. Any such project has goals that have a rather small overlap with that of Wikipedia. However, that overlap (a few thousand articles) might be interesting enough that compatible licenses and some coordination could be useful.

I tend to agree with Lars here. I am interested in such a project, and I think it could have a life on its own, with some of its information being in wikipedia as well. I tend to consider Wikipedia as a "generalist" encyclopedia, which should try to stay simple, readable to most, and avoid jargon and very specialised information. Wikipedia can be a central reference, with surrounding projects, smaller, and more specialised.

I still need to see better what this project should be, but I think it should be separated, but with strong interactions with Wikipedia.

Daniel Mayer wrote:

--- Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:

...

I am interested in such a project, and I think it could have a life on its own, with some of its information being in wikipedia as well. I tend to consider Wikipedia as a "generalist" encyclopedia, which should try to stay simple, readable to most, and avoid jargon and very specialised information. Wikipedia can be a central reference, with surrounding projects, smaller, and more specialised.

Such a project must not overlap with Wikipedia or any other Wikimedia project in any significant way. For example, creating a war and conflict Wikimedia project would be unwise since that would divert energy now used to improve that aspect of Wikipedia. But that is not to say that creating a textbook on the subject would be a bad idea to have on Wikibooks (in fact, such a textbook would be most welcome). However, that is different than having individual articles on individual topics (which is the role of an encyclopedia).

...

I still need to see better what this project should be, but I think it should be separated, but with strong interactions with Wikipedia.

It sounds like an openly editable relational database is needed. That way small amounts of info could be used and searched for in Wikispecies while prose and encyclopedic info can be kept in Wikipedia. Such software could also be used for other database info on just about anything, so limiting this to just species and taxa may be unwise.

But I will not support any fork of our bilogy section. Any Wikispecies project *must* be complimentary to Wikipedia and cause no harm to it. The burden of proof is on those who want to start such a project if they want it to be hosted by Wikimedia.

This also brings up a very important general point: We need to develop a clear process for starting new projects (language versions are a separate matter). For example, proposals need to be made, then debated and refined. A list of any software 'must haves' and wants needs to be developed (these are very significant for Wikispecies) and then we need to determine if the project can start without the 'must haves' or if it has to wait until the software is ready. An assement on whether or not the proposed project concept could be absorbed into an existing Wikimedia project and if that proposed project would welcome also needs to be conducted. Pros and cons need to be devloped. Then we need to have a Wikimedia-wide vote to certify the project and launch it (if the software needed to run it has been developed).

-- mav

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Mav, I remain amazed about the arguments you have against wikispecies, and I really wonder what you base your comments on. I am a database guy. I have created a relational database specifically for the taxonomy of plants and I *know* that this does not cover all the bases. Then again, the Wikimedia product is based on MySQL which can do relational things. The current wikimedia software is a great starting point to find out the requirements. What is the point of starting coding without a spec. Specs have not been written in commission. Specs are not democratic. Specs are meritocratic.We do not know what is needed at this point in time.

I have put many arguments and I have not seen one refuted so far.

When Wikispecies is a resource, you can have all scientific publication resulting in a valid scientific names for one plant. This is not usefull in Wiktionary and it is outside of the current scope of the ToL.

To have a war, you need warring sentiments. There is no need for those. It will be a different public. It is similar with wikipedia and wiktionary. When an article on Wikipedia is only a dictionary definition you plaster {{beg}} on it and possibly copy the defition to wiktionary; everybody is a winner. The same with wikispecies and wikicommons, a load of pictures a load of scientific publications adding up to resources that can be used on en:ToL, nl:ToL, fr:ToL. It is the same thing as with nl:wikipedia, we do not mind the en:ToL for us it is a resource not a competitor. We can be a resource for en:ToL. We do have species for which there is no article on en:Wikipedia. That does not mean we are in a state of war !!

Wikispecies will not be a textbook, it will be a resource. The value will increase with a growing amount of data. As such the highest value will be in the en:ToL as this will be the starting point for a lot of Wikispecies information. It will refer to en:ToL, it will use the Taxoboxes. From there it will grow. It will also link to the other wikipedia and as a consequence have data not available on en:. Who is losing out, who stands to benefit ?

When specific software is created for Wikispecies, it will exist with specifity. It will be created for taxonomic use. It does not mean that relational stuff will not be possible for other projects as that is a function of MySQL and has nothing to do with Wikispecies.

One final question, when a project is proposed, when enough people are interested in it, why would you oppose it. What do you have to lose? What is it to you? This is an open project, if you do not like it, do not contribute to it.

Nobody is saying this is going to be a winner, only time will tell. The only thing is, there are people who think it may be valuable and it may have potential. They want to find out what the possibilities are. They can do this inside of wikimedia and they can do this outside wikimedia. Having it within wikimedia gives Wikimedia more weight not less.

Thanks, Gerard

Daniel Mayer wrote:

--- Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:

...

Daniel Mayer wrote:

...

...

Looks essentially what a wikispecies should look like, I guess. I guess

a

...

...

w-species would focus more on the biology, history, genealogy, genetics,

or

...

...

what, so that it's different from the w-pedia?

All that should be covered in the Wikipedia article.

My impression is that Wikispecies' goal is to catalog *every* existing (and extinct?) species. We're talking about, what, hundred thousands of articles. This is similar to documenting every town and village, no matter what the size, and such attempts have historically not been appreciated within Wikipedia. This is why I think Wikispecies should be developed separately.

A great many species will only be covered at the genus level since there isn't much known about them individually. This is not a problem.

The overlap between this proposed project and Wikipedia is simply too great and will thus harm our coverage of taxa and species by dividing that aspect between two different projects.

-- mav

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Mav,

What is this overlap? Given that ToL only covers the most recent names and loads of names have been validly published and still have relevance, I fail to see where the overlap is. You presume that little is known about many species, when there is traction among the serious amateurs and the professionals, you will be amazed how much is known about things on a species, subspecies, variety and forma level.

The scientific descriptions of taxons are inherently public domain, there is no single resource that collects them. I know of a Yahoo group that has some descriptions on line for cacti. There are more of these small resources. By having an open place where these things can be posted with some assurance that they will remain there, you already have something that adds value beyond the current ToL and gives validation to the idea of a Wikispecies.

Please start thinking, you will see that there is more to life than the ToL.

Thanks, GerardM

Stan Shebs wrote:

Gerard Meijssen wrote:

...

[...] You presume that little is known about many species, when there is traction among the serious amateurs and the professionals, you will be amazed how much is known about things on a species, subspecies, variety and forma level.

That's because there are many for which little is known - I just recently added a beetle family (Glaresidae) for whom none of the larvae have never been identified, nor is anything known about their life history, not even what they eat.

...

The scientific descriptions of taxons are inherently public domain, there is no single resource that collects them. I know of a Yahoo group that has some descriptions on line for cacti. There are more of these small resources. By having an open place where these things can be posted with some assurance that they will remain there, you already have something that adds value beyond the current ToL and gives validation to the idea of a Wikispecies.

The implied comment here is that really-detailed WP content runs the risk of being deleted, but as far as I know that's never happened to species descriptions, and there are a bunch of valued pages discussing obsolete taxa. Adding detailed info and making sure it's accurate is simply a painstaking process, and there aren't very many people doing it; most of the time I just get the basics written down and move on, on the theory that breadth is more useful than depth, if one only has so much time. For some beetle families WP now has the sole English description to be found online anywhere, believe it or not, so we're not quite to the point of needing every beetle species yet.

So the value of a separate wikispecies hangs on where Wikipedia draws the line on its content; as far as I know, no one has ever actually drawn a line at less than "everything known about a species".

By contrast, if I proposed importing my database of 147,000+ types of postage stamps, about half of all types known, I bet a lot of people would say "too much detail for the encyclopedia!" :-)

Stan

---

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Stan, When you want to import your database on stamps, I personally would not mind. Propably it would be a great thing if it is were accompanied by pictures. I am pretty sure there are loads of people who would really welcome it. It would make wikipedia an important resource on stamps. On nl: we have a chess entheuasiast. He has written a zillion articles on chess including chess players. Why not ?

A scientific description of a taxon is in Latin sometimes in English. It is latin gooblediegook. It is relevant for those who can read it. I fail to see that several hundred thousant articles like this (overly optimistic, this will only happen in 25 years if at all, not that these articles do not exist) would be appreciated by the average Wikipedia user. When an authorised version of the scientific description is uploaded, it should be locked against further editing. The value is in it being the original description.

I do and did not imply that info would be removed/deleted from wikipedia. I do imply that wikipedia is not the environment for these kinds of information. As an aside again; I would definetly have a wikispecies article refer to the articles in the wikipedia. ToL is a valuable resource, it can be a better resource if cooperation is possible. Then again it is not only en:wikipedia that would be great as a cooperating partner. Fishbase was mentioned, there is IPNI, there are many resources. The more cooperation the better the quality. Again some of it will rub off on wikispecies some on ToL on en: nl: de: fr:

As to the Glaresidae family, GREAT, it proves my point that ToL is a valuable resource that is continually increasing in quality. Wikispecies will not detract from that. PS on http://www.zin.ru/Animalia/Coleoptera/eng/glaresi.htm there is a picture. As this is a Russian website it may be public domain..

Thanks, Gerard

Why don't we see a few example web pages of what the wikispecies will look like, or have several different examples, perhaps somewhere on Wikimedia, so we can refine the interface/idea?

James

-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Mayer Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2004 3:45 PM To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

--- Gerard Meijssen gerardm@myrealbox.com wrote:

What is this overlap? Given that ToL only covers the most recent names and loads of names have been validly published and still have relevance,

No we do not. We give the scientific names and also alternate names as well, including old and no longer used ones. All that info can and should be in Wikipedia articles.

I fail to see where the overlap is. You presume that little is known about many species, when there is traction among the serious amateurs and the professionals, you will be amazed how much is known about things on a species, subspecies, variety and forma level.

Then put that info in Wikipedia. Done.

The scientific descriptions of taxons are inherently public domain, there is no single resource that collects them.

Why can't Wikipedia play that role? Oh wait, we are trying to that already.

I know of a Yahoo group that has some descriptions on line for cacti. There are more of these small resources.

I know of an online encyclopedia that is working on doing this for every taxa both extant and extinct. Maybe you have heard of it (hint: it has a funny name).

By having an open place where these things can be posted with some assurance that they will remain there, you already have something that adds value beyond the current ToL and gives validation to the idea of a Wikispecies.

And the wiki process does not do that? You are working from a false assumption that good info is somehow lost in Wikpedia.

-- mav

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Marco Krohn wrote:

On Tuesday 24 August 2004 22:50, James R. Johnson wrote:

...

Why don't we see a few example web pages of what the wikispecies will look like, or have several different examples, perhaps somewhere on Wikimedia, so we can refine the interface/idea?

that would be nice, in particular for "outsiders" like me who probably do not understand the core of the problem. What I have seen at fishbase.org and from what I know about the scope of Wikipedia I don't see the problem yet. If additional features are needed for wikispecies we should discuss if it's possible to add these to the existing software.

The only problem I see at the moment is the remark that articles should be locked, which I can understand, but I think at least the accepted wikispecies experts should be able to modify the article.

best regards, Marco _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

The lockdown would be only for very specific resources; they are the verbatim text of the original publication of a taxon. The only need for these to be changed is when they are not verbatim. Consequently, they are perfect or they are useless for scientific reasons. At this moment in time there are none on any wikipedia.

This is an example of such a text: it was published in Succulenta in 1971 - 50(2) a Dutch magazine on succulents. Hence the second part in Dutch. The publication is valid for it is in Latin. *********************************************************

*Frailea cataphracta* (Dams) Br. et R *var. tuyensis* Buining et Moser var. nova

A. F. H. BUINING

*Corpus* solitarium, 3-3,5 cm altum, ad 4 cm diam., griseoviride ad cinereum. *Costae* ad 20, planissimae, sulco plano obacure-viridi separatae, ad 5 mm latae; sub areolia stria lunata atro-viridis. *Areolae* ex longo rotundae, nudae vel vix aliquo tomenti brunnei tectae. *Spinae* pectinate positae, utrimque 4, infra brunneae, densatae ut cepa, ceterum pallide-tornese ad vitrese, ad 1 mm longae. *Flores* infundibuliformes, 24 mm longi, 20 mm lati, pallidecitrini. *Pericarpellum* 6 mm longum, 5 mm latum, infra nudum, ceterum fulvis saetis albipilosumque. *Receptaculum* 4 mm longum, saetis pallidefuivis albipilosumque. *Folia perianthii* exteriora spathulata. apice acutissimo, alba ad lurida, linae centrali pallide-viridi; *interiora* spathulata, acuta, pallidissime citrina. *Stylus* 11 mm longus, pallide-flavus. *Stigmata* 5, ad 4 mm longa, pallide-flava. *Stamina* primaria 10 mm longa, circum stylum inserta, pallide-flava; *secundaria* 5 mm longa, pallide-flava. *Antherae* 0,8 mm longae, flavo-albescentes. *Camera nectarea* 0,5 mm lata, aperta. *Caverna seminifere* 3 mm longa, 3,5 mm lata. *Fructus* rotundus, 8 mm diam., brevibue saetis fulvia lanaque alba*. Semen* lintriforme, 2 mm longum, 1,6 mm latum, spadiceum, nitidum; *testa* levis, lineamentis reticulatis. *Habitat* ad Capilla tuya ad meridiam Paraguari Paraguay

*Lichaam* enkel, 3-3,5 cm hoog, tot 4 cm diam., grijsgroen askleurig. *Ribben* tot 20, zeer vlak, gescheiden door donkergroene vlakke groef, breed tot 5 mm; onder de areolen een halve maanvormige zwartgroene streep. *Areolen* ovaal, kaal of met nauwelijks bruin vilt. *Dorens* kamvormig gesteld, aan weerszijde 4, onderaan bruin, uiachtig verdikt, verder licht hoornkleurig tot glasachtig, tot 1 mm lang. *Bloem* trechtervormig, 24 mm lang, 20 mm breed, licht citroengeel. *Pericarpellum* 6 mm lang, 5 mm breed, onderaan kaal, verder met lichtbruine borstels en witte haren. *Receptaculum* lang 4 mm, met licht geelbruine borstels en witte haren. *Buitenste perianthbladeren* spatelvormig, met naaldfijne punt, wit tot vuilgeel, met zachtgroene middenstreep; *binnenste* spatelvormig, toegespits, zeer licht citroengeel. *Stijl* 11 mm lang, lichtgeel. *Stempels* 5, tot 4 mm lang, lichtgeel. *Primaire meeldraden* 10 mm lang, rond stijl geplant, lichtgeel; secundaire 5 mm lang, lichtgeel. *Helmknopjes* 0,8 mm lang, geelwit. *Nektarruimte* 0,5 mm breed, open. *Zaadholte* 3 mm lang, 3,5 mm breed. *Vrucht* rond, 8 mm diam., met korte geelbruine borstels en witte wolharen. *Zaad* bootvormig, 2 mm lang, 1,6 mm breed, kastanjebruin, glanzend; *testa* glad met netvormige tekening. *Groeiplaats* Paraguay, bij Capilla tuya, ten zuiden van Paraguari. ************************************************************

Marco Krohn wrote:

On Tuesday 24 August 2004 22:50, James R. Johnson wrote:

...

Why don't we see a few example web pages of what the wikispecies will look like, or have several different examples, perhaps somewhere on Wikimedia, so we can refine the interface/idea?

that would be nice, in particular for "outsiders" like me who probably do not understand the core of the problem. What I have seen at fishbase.org and from what I know about the scope of Wikipedia I don't see the problem yet. If additional features are needed for wikispecies we should discuss if it's possible to add these to the existing software.

One thing that may not be obvious at FishBase is that the screens are mostly database dumps, not free text, and much updating of it works by clicking on checkboxes and selecting from popups. I brought this up a while back as a general consideration, namely how to effectively support general databases in a wiki framework, but didn't get much feedback. Tabular data in WP now is maintained manually with considerable effort, and as the quantity grows, I think it's gradually exceeding editors' capacity to manage.

The only problem I see at the moment is the remark that articles should be locked, which I can understand, but I think at least the accepted wikispecies experts should be able to modify the article.

FishBase' main requirement of contributors, as I understand it, is that a literature citation is required with each addition, and the references get their own table in the database. I don't think a "accepted wikispecies experts" concept is going to get very far in any Wikimedia-sanctioned project...

Stan

Daniel Mayer wrote:

The overlap between this proposed project and Wikipedia is simply too great and will thus harm our coverage of taxa and species by dividing that aspect between two different projects.

Much like IMDb threatens Wikipedia's coverage of movies and actors. They should close down immediately. Why don't they.

Daniel Mayer wrote:

That is a total strawman Lars - I expect better from you. First, IMDb is NOT a Wikimedia project.

I'm sorry. When I said Wikispecies should probably best develop separately from Wikipedia (but with a compatible license), I assumed it would not be a Wikimedia project. I didn't spell this out, and neither did you spell out your contrary assumption. Or at least I didn't understand so.

Still, if I started a semiconductor wiki, where I tried to document every transistor since the [[AF107]] (Germanium, PNP, high frequency, circa 1961), I think my articles would be thrown out of the main Wikipedia pretty soon, and I should develop this idea in my own, separate project. The depth of such a project is too specialized to fit within a general encyclopedia and I suspect that the same would go for Wikispecies, if it is successful.

--- Lars Aronsson lars@aronsson.se wrote:

Still, if I started a semiconductor wiki, where I tried to document every transistor since the [[AF107]] (Germanium, PNP, high frequency, circa 1961), I think my articles would be thrown out of the main Wikipedia pretty soon, and I should develop this idea in my own, separate project.

A table with all your data you mention would be welcome as a daughter article linked from the main Wikipedia articles you mentioned.

-- mav

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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

--- "James R. Johnson" modean52@comcast.net wrote:

Ok. Would the wikispecies then be a redirect to the wikipedia, or how do you think it should run?

Improve the Wikipedia by adding these data to it. I see no need for a separate project. Categories could be used all they way to the species level and an advanced search should eventually be added to allow people to search *within* a category (or set of categories). Thus what we need are some additional and logical MediaWiki features, not a separate project.

Balkanization of our biology section (which is relatively weak in the English Wikipedia) will harm, not help, that area.

-- mav

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Would the new project be GFDL? Would it be easy to transfer contents to/from Wikipedia? How would we ensure that effort is not duplicated between the two projects? Do you have suggestions for improvements to the ToL project?

I understand that the information collected by the ToL project will indeed overlap to a big extent with the wikispecies directory, but that might turn out as an advantage rather than a disadvantage. As you said, the ToL presents information in a prosaic way as it is suitable for an encyclopedia. If wikispecies should become a reference for all users (including scientists), however, there are some points you need to consider:

1.) A clear sturcture as the one presented previously would be crucial for a specific (mind the play on words - specific) search; and that is imortant to attract professional users

2.) The sheer amount and uniformness of the bio-data would justify a separate access to the information

3.) A separate platform does NOT mean that wikispecies will have to be segregated from the wikipedia. Rather the opposite: wikispecies websites should use the same layout and should be accessible from wikipedia by normal search. More advanced users, however, would search with more detailed tools from the "wikispecies.org" portal.

So far, the ToL is ambitous, but doesn't serve the purpose of a wikispecies that should be organised in taxonomic terms and trees and deal exclusively for biological contents.

It is not meant to compete with wikipedia, but rather branch out of it without being a separate unit. I am looking forward to your support! By the way: most people who already assured me of their support were people who work as authors for wikipedia in bio-related subjects. Best,

Benedikt

Well, I'll give you some articles in English and Anglo-Saxon, and a little German (maybe add to other people's articles there), and in a few months, my German will be better after having lived there. Can't wait to see it started.

James

-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Benedikt Mandl Sent: Monday, August 23, 2004 2:55 PM To: wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: [Wikipedia-l] wikispecies question

Benedikt

Benedikt, Do you want the wikispecies to be English only, or have sub-domains en.wikispecies.org, de.wikispecies.org, ang.wikispecies.org

and so forth?

James

------------------

Hi James!

Highest priority is to get it started properly in English, and for scientists (who are my starter/beta-test-target group) English is the lingua franca.

Nevertheless, in the spirit of wikipedia I think it is desirable to go for other languages; also for practical reasons: it would make wikispecies attractive for kids/schools and regional applications, such as local bird-watchers (I live in England right now, and these people do exist, actually in vast amounts) or national biodiversity projects as the German "GEO Tag der Artenvielfalt". As always with wiki-projects, it will mainly depend on the will of the people who contribute and use it.

Benedikt

Thank you very much for your reply Benedikt.

Hopefully most of the issues are getting in the open now.

If, by some dint of magic, I were left in charge of deciding whether wikispecies became a wikimedia project, here are the things I would want to see/know about. (Some of this is just a collection of other comments in this thread)

1) A review of similar projects on the web. Particularly: -- ITIS is a US government database - is it public domain. Would it be usable? -- What happened to the data from the crippled allspecies project? Could it be released and used? -- Tolweb? Who is behind it? How are they doing? Would they welcome co-operation?

2) Funding. A db devoted to species is much more likely to be eligible for certain funding than a general project. E.g. tolweb is basically funded by NSF grants (http://tolweb.org/tree/home.pages/funding.html). Could/should wikispecies take advantage in a way that wikipedia hasn't/can't?

3) Target audience. The target audience should be scientists and the information contained should be scientific. This will attract scientists to the project. Otherwise it overlaps with the current WP project too much.

4) A commitment to develop the WikiDB module as mentioned by Tim Starling. I don't think using plain MediaWiki would be good enough for wikispecies - implementing in terms of categories and templates would be a bit hackish for the purposes required. A proper db would reduce the overlap with WPToL.

5) A commitment that the information would be GDFL compatible.

6) There should be a defined mechanism for importing wikispecies information into wikipedia. I envisage the current ToL taxoboxes being currently replaced with information imported from wikispecies using some sort of filter. Alongside this import would sit a more waffly description of the species and less scientific-relevant information. The import process should be automated as possible, and preferably entirely automatic and in real-time (though this would require an extension to the MW software). This import should be designed to work with non-English Wikipedias as far as is possible. It would not be acceptable to just have links to Wikispecies. It must be more integrated to avoid duplication of effort.

But, I'm not in charge, so the above is nothing more than just my thoughts

Pete/Pcb21

Benedikt Mandl wrote:

Would the new project be GFDL? Would it be easy to transfer contents to/from Wikipedia? How would we ensure that effort is not duplicated between the two projects? Do you have suggestions for improvements to the ToL project?

I understand that the information collected by the ToL project will indeed overlap to a big extent with the wikispecies directory, but that might turn out as an advantage rather than a disadvantage. As you said, the ToL presents information in a prosaic way as it is suitable for an encyclopedia. If wikispecies should become a reference for all users (including scientists), however, there are some points you need to consider:

1.) A clear sturcture as the one presented previously would be crucial for a specific (mind the play on words - specific) search; and that is imortant to attract professional users

2.) The sheer amount and uniformness of the bio-data would justify a separate access to the information

3.) A separate platform does NOT mean that wikispecies will have to be segregated from the wikipedia. Rather the opposite: wikispecies websites should use the same layout and should be accessible from wikipedia by normal search. More advanced users, however, would search with more detailed tools from the "wikispecies.org" portal.

So far, the ToL is ambitous, but doesn't serve the purpose of a wikispecies that should be organised in taxonomic terms and trees and deal exclusively for biological contents.

It is not meant to compete with wikipedia, but rather branch out of it without being a separate unit. I am looking forward to your support! By the way: most people who already assured me of their support were people who work as authors for wikipedia in bio-related subjects. Best,

Benedikt

I went to the Tree of Life page - thanks for the link, btw. I thought it was a Wiki project, and thus housed on a wiki-site (wikitol.com or something like that). It's nice, but a wikispecies would, I think, be easier to navigate. That's simply how I've seen the wikis to be.

James

-----Original Message----- From: wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Benedikt Mandl Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 7:09 AM To: wpmail@pcbartlett.com; wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Developers needed!

1. A review of similar projects on the web. Particularly:

-- ITIS is a US government database - is it public domain. Would it be usable? -- What happened to the data from the crippled allspecies project? Could it be released and used? -- Tolweb? Who is behind it? How are they doing? Would they welcome co-operation?

An evalutation of that was already done to some extend. I know ITIS and its European equivalent IPNI, both very good ressources and probably supportive. Species2000 is based on other species bases who certainly got money at least in some cases for providing their data. ALL species released nothing apart from big noise and therefore, I would personally not expect much more than addresses with people who might support us. They still maintain an office via the Californian Academy of Sciences, but don't do much. I will check out Tolweb. So far, I'd say that Fishbase.org is the most advanced database in a similar manner as WikiSpecies should be.

2. Funding. A db devoted to species is much more likely to be eligible

for certain funding than a general project. E.g. tolweb is basically funded by NSF grants (http://tolweb.org/tree/home.pages/funding.html). Could/should wikispecies take advantage in a way that wikipedia hasn't/can't?

Funding: I created a list of potential supporters, covering government grants, private foundations, museums, universities and individuals who might provide us with funding. The problem is, that several projects were based on donations and public funding and didn't take off properly (ALL species, Species2000). All successful bases (IPNI, fishbase.org) were at least started as non-commercial, more than less public directories. I dont want to release the list, as I don't think that funding will be neccessary to get started - and a pain to get unless we have something to show.

3. Target audience. The target audience should be scientists and the

information contained should be scientific. This will attract scientists to the project. Otherwise it overlaps with the current WP project too much.

Yes and no - in combination with wikipedia and wiktionary I am sure that WikiSpecies will become a valuable and accepted ressource for many non- professional users as well. See fishbase: it is scientific, done by scientist, but highly aprreciated by divers, nature lovers, marinists and even aquarium-fetishists.

4. A commitment to develop the WikiDB module as mentioned by Tim

Starling. I don't think using plain MediaWiki would be good enough for wikispecies - implementing in terms of categories and templates would be a bit hackish for the purposes required. A proper db would reduce the overlap with WPToL.

5. A commitment that the information would be GDFL compatible.

Most of taxonomic data is open and public anyway.

Thank you for the input. I am looking forward on more feedback and support. Best,

Benedikt

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--- Pete/Pcb21 pete_pcb21_wpmail@pcbartlett.com wrote:

6. There should be a defined mechanism for importing wikispecies

information into wikipedia. I envisage the current ToL taxoboxes being currently replaced with information imported from wikispecies using some sort of filter. Alongside this import would sit a more waffly description of the species and less scientific-relevant information. The import process should be automated as possible, and preferably entirely automatic and in real-time (though this would require an extension to the MW software). This import should be designed to work with non-English Wikipedias as far as is possible. It would not be acceptable to just have links to Wikispecies. It must be more integrated to avoid duplication of effort.

This is a wrong-headed approach since many different things will require database functionality. Just have the common data on Wikimedia Commons and call upon it from within one of the other Wikimedia projects. Element data, as I already noted, would also be very important to host in that way.

-- mav

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--- Pete/Pcb21 pete_pcb21_wpmail@pcbartlett.com wrote:

Daniel Mayer wrote:

...

This is a wrong-headed approach...

Fair enough. I don't really care how its implemented. I just care that there is an easy way to avoid duplication of effort.

Me too! That is why I like the idea of using Wikimedia Commons.

-- mav

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James R. Johnson wrote:

I don't know much about the "category system," but if you were to use Kingdom, Phylum, Subphylum, Family, Class, Order, etc. down to Genus and Species as categories, that'd make it quite simple. I don't know how you'd work that, but it would make things simpler.

I have mixed feelings about the proposal. While the textual material might be better in the existing encyclopedias, there are probably data structural advantages that could be derived from the proposal, though I would see it as a single project that could be interlinked with the various Wikipedias. The idea of having a separate Wikispecies for each language would be a tremendous waste of resources.

Having a sample Wiki that works out some of the problems over a limited taxonomic range would likely be helpful so that those involved could work out the bugs in their system. This includes dealing with the view of some cladists that the traditional taxonomic ranks shown above whould be avoided. It will also be the best way to convince the skeptics that this could be a valuable spin-off. At the same time it should be made abundantly clear that support of a sample Wikispecies should not imply acceptance of a full blown project.

Spin-off or daughter projects need to be distinguished from forks in that they would seek to maintain full interoperability with the other member projects in the family. They should be bound by the same fundamental principles such as NPOV, free access, respect for copyright and each other, and the software used by each should maximize compatibility. Outside that core of policies, the diversity of approaches and formats enriches us all. It encourages members to find their own solutions to problems. In the long run over time these diverse solutions can be compared, and the techniques that prove successful on one project can be imported into another when the participants are ready. This gives more opportunity to think outside the box. The one big single project sometimes requires us to apply solutions prematurely in a way that makes it more difficult to reconsider what in hindsight might have been a superior solution.

Smaller projects also involve more people in the decision making, and mean that a newbie can feel some level of ownership much earlier. That means more wikiholics are available to do work, many of whom would soon feel unwanted on a big single project. This is a much bigger question than what happens with Wikispecies. It has more to do with scalability, and the fundamental right of every individual to reinvent the wheel.

Ec

Ray Saintonge wrote:

Smaller projects also involve more people in the decision making, and mean

that a newbie can feel some level of ownership >much earlier. That means more wikiholics are available to do work, many of whom would soon feel unwanted on a big single >project.

Anglo-Saxon wikipedia....

James

+------+ | db | <------ interface ----> WIKIPEDIA | ....| | : | <--- other interface -> WIKISPECIES +------+

instead of

+------+ | db | <----- interface ----> WIKIPEDIA | | +----+ | | <-- manual updating ----------------> |db2 | -> WIKISPECIES +------+ +----+

What do you think?

I think that this option would have considerable advantages, as long as we can make sure that the db provides specific information for wikispecies users that wikipedia users might find too detailed/specialised. If the wikispecies db will be organised like in your suggestion, we would have to be able to create an interface that makes it clear that it is a unit and not a general encyclopedia and provide similar search functions as other species databases (as www.fishbase.org - according to the needs of a certain taxon).

Benedikt

This sounds interesting...

--- Till Westermayer till@tillwe.de wrote:

How to implement this technically speaking, I don't know, but how about this:

• The Wikispecies interface only shows article tagged with

Category:Wikispecies (or whatever is the best category).

• This project uses a specific parser, allowing for the implementation

of tree navigation and a more "scientifically" looking output of data (that can be found in the taxabox).

• Maybe other data is in the articles used as source for Wikispecies and

hidden somehow (via a special comment mode or some other specialized tag in the article, or even as additional stored data in a separate db, accessed via the article name = scientific species name as key)

• "Edit this entry" in the Wikispecies interface would bring up a window

consisting of:

    - the wikipedia edit window showing the source text
    - additional data input fields

• A user in the wikipedia proper will only see the wikipedia article,

but not the additional data. The only thing other for them is the "Category:Wikispecies" tag (which would explain, when opened as article, what Wikispecies project is and how to access it in the "scientific" interface).

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Hi Magnus,

there seem to be two obvious possible solutions: the one you described, and the one I described (below). While thinking about my proposal, I thought along the lines of your proposal (not in that general way, rather in the form of: let there be a part commented out in the wiki source, that is only interpreted in wikispecies). Your optional-tag is a much more general and elegant solution to that problem. But I'm still not sure if it is the best solution (even if it is relative easy to hack). This is mainly because I think what project like WikiSpecies, or maybe WikiStamps, WikiRamBotUSTowns, WikiElections etc. need in additionto the free form text editable in Wikipedia is something like a wiki-definable db (so Tim's general WikiDB approach seems to go more in that direction). The other thing all these possible projects have in common that they should continue to be anchored in Wikipedia, but they also should have the db information. One could do that with the solution I proposed, i.e. by using separate but somehow linked dbs and interfaces, or one could invent a special markup for custom variable fields in the wiki text (i.e. something like the Semantic Web people are doing, if I understand their approach correctly). I'm not sure if using markup for db fields to simulate a db in a db is such a good idea, but it's easy editable, that much is sure.

A typical entry on, say, a totally bogus tiger, could maybe look like this in a markup-db-solution:

Tigers are [[mammal]]s living in the [[Sibiria|Sibirian]] [[Tundra]].

...

== Species data ==

[[kingdom]]: [[animal]]s <TOL:kingdom=animalia> [[family or whatever that is]]: [[mammal]] <TOL:family=mammalia> [[species]]: big cats (''felibigus'') <TOL:species=felibigus>

...

== Trivia ==

Tigers are a big issue in Winnie-the-Pooh, especially one tiger called Tigger. <LIT:occurence=Tiger,book=Winnie-the-Pooh,name=Tigger>

This would give the following pseudo db entries:

in the Tree of life database (short: TOL)

in the kingdom table the relation key:Tiger <-> kingdom:animalia in the family table the relation key:Tiger <-> family:mammalia in the species table the relation key:Tiger <-> species:felibigus

in the Literatur database (short: LIT)

in the occurence table the relation key:generated <-> occurence:Tiger,book:Winnie-the-Pooh, name:Tigger

((key generated because the article name appears on the right side of the pseudo db entry in the wikipedia article -> brings to our attention the problem of n:m relations))

I don't know if it is possible to automatically parse changes in such entries to maintan databases. One (rather brute force way) would be to delete everything in such a database which has the article name key of "Tiger" if the article is changed, then parse the article for pseudo-db entries marked with <<...>> and insert the information anew.

There could be a / a lot of specialized interfaces for queries on this database (which is something separate from the wiki article text db), where on could say something like (in very pseudo SQL):

SELECT from the TOL database from the kingdom table all entries where kingdom = animalia

gives back formatted information on Tiger (see Wikipedia article, see all TOL information, see all information) Cat Shark Homo sapiens ...

Just some ideas, some thinking aloud.

----

Alternate solution, which would require much less special cases:

• introduce "<optional type=wikispecies>lots'o'data</optional>"

tag, which will ** show the data for everyone who has marked himself as a member of wikispecies project in user settings ** show a link "More detail information" for everyone else; that link will then display the full thing

• introduce "<categorytree>" tag, which will show a category tree

for the current article ** attribute "super=1" to show the category below, "super=all" to show everything down to the root ** attribute "sub=1" to show the next subcategory, "sub=all" to show them all

This is

• relatively easy to hack (hide "optional" section unless

this-and-that condition)

• usable for many sub-projects like histroy etc.
• allows everyone to get all the data without "average" users

being squashed by it

• fully transparent for searching (search will find keywords in

the "optional" secation as well)

If required, we can parse-out the "optional" part for editing. But that's optional ;-)

Magnus

Daniel Mayer wrote:

...

This sounds interesting...

--- Till Westermayer till@tillwe.de wrote:

...

How to implement this technically speaking, I don't know, but how about this:

• The Wikispecies interface only shows article tagged with

Category:Wikispecies (or whatever is the best category).

• This project uses a specific parser, allowing for the

implementation of tree navigation and a more "scientifically" looking output of data (that can be found in the taxabox).

• Maybe other data is in the articles used as source for

Wikispecies and hidden somehow (via a special comment mode or some other specialized tag in the article, or even as additional stored data in a separate db, accessed via the article name = scientific species name as key)

• "Edit this entry" in the Wikispecies interface would bring up

a window consisting of:

   - the wikipedia edit window showing the source text
   - additional data input fields

• A user in the wikipedia proper will only see the wikipedia

article, but not the additional data. The only thing other for them is the "Category:Wikispecies" tag (which would explain, when opened as article, what Wikispecies project is and how to access it in the "scientific" interface).

__ . / / / / ... Till Westermayer - till we *) . . . mailto:till@tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072 . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179 . . . . . _______________________________________________ Wikipedia-l mailing list Wikipedia-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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