Daniel Mayer wrote:
Then what the hell is this:
Looks like a fork of the English Wikipedia's article on scientific classification to me.
Of course things like that may happen as everyone is allowed to edit there. I guess the author of that article just was not aware of what the page should be about. When wikispecies is finally set up things like that are likely to be deleted.
My interest in such a project is setting up a species directory linking to all the language editions of the Wikipedia. Jimbo formulated a non-forking policy guideline and I have a great interest as well that the project won't have any overlapping with Wikipedia. I am active in the German Wikipedia and worked on several hundred animal articles there, and that will remain my main activity. If I would suspect the project of becoming a Bio-Wikipedia or something like that I would immediately vote to suspend the project. But now it is intended to work within Wikispecies on a concept for the project in order to not become a fork. Until then, I wouldn't take articles by single individuals (like the "Classification" article) seriously.
Benedikt Mandl is not a Wikipedian, but there are many long-time contributors to Wikipedia interested in the Wikispecies project. Do you think that they all want to damage Wikipedia? I believe that Wikispecies could work for the benefit of Wikipedia if it is done right. Otherwise I would never consider working on it.
Mirko
--- Mirko Thiessen wikipedia@mirko-thiessen.de wrote:
My interest in such a project is setting up a species directory linking to all the language editions of the Wikipedia. Jimbo formulated a non-forking policy guideline and I have a great interest as well that the project won't have any overlapping with Wikipedia. I am active in the German Wikipedia and worked on several hundred animal articles there, and that will remain my main activity.
It was the formulation of the non-forking policy that I completely missed - all I saw was an announcement that the board had decided the issue in a meeting that I didn't even know took place (and I check Wikipedia-l, Foundation-l, WikiEN-l, Meta Goings on and Wikimedia News every day). So while I'm still not happy that Wikispecies has its own database separate from the Wikimedia Commons, I can at least live with the decision. *If* I had known beforehand about the conditions the board placed on Wikispecies, then none of the ugliness of the past day or so would have happened.
I have already accepted Jimbo's apology for not keeping me in the loop and he has accepted my apology for making the public accusation that the board was doing something underhanded (based on the limited information I had, it did seem that way). In the future I will first seek private clarification on similar matters so as not to create a scene. In short, I should have assumed good faith.
Sorry for the fuss people.
If I would suspect the project of becoming a Bio-Wikipedia or something like that I would immediately vote to suspend the project. But now it is intended to work within Wikispecies on a concept for the project in order to not become a fork. Until then, I wouldn't take articles by single individuals (like the "Classification" article) seriously.
One question:
Is the level of detail in this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Zion_and_Kolob_canyons_area
appropriate for Wikipedia? Or would it be better to have such an article in a Wikigeology project? I would certainly hate to see similarly detailed [[Biology of ...]] articles not be created for species in Wikipedia because the same content is in Wikispecies. Or worse, for them to exist in both and thus half the contributor base working on each of them.
-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav - who has decided to stay)
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Daniel Mayer wrote:
Is the level of detail in this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_the_Zion_and_Kolob_canyons_area
appropriate for Wikipedia? Or would it be better to have such an article in a Wikigeology project? I would certainly hate to see similarly detailed [[Biology of ...]] articles not be created for species in Wikipedia because the same content is in Wikispecies. Or worse, for them to exist in both and thus half the contributor base working on each of them.
Wouldn't the number of articles of this type be a factor? As long as it's the only one it might as well stay where it is. A Wikigeology project is theoretically conceivable, but nothing can happen until someone has actually conceived it and is willing to play a leading role in its development. More people think they know about the world's animals than about its geological structure. It may be necessary to develop a Wikiatlas before a Wikigeology project.
Ec
--- Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Wouldn't the number of articles of this type be a factor? As long as it's the only one it might as well stay where it is.
I plan to create one for every national park and national monument in the United States. I then plan to create geology articles for every U.S. state and add a lot of info to [[Geology of North America]]. This is all very appropriate for Wikipedia, IMO. The merit of each article itself, not the fact of it having many similar sister articles, is what should be looked at.
A Wikigeology project is theoretically conceivable, but nothing can happen until someone has actually conceived it and is willing to play a leading role in its development.
If there is ever such a project it must not be an encyclopedia of geology since our encyclopedia project is Wikipedia. It can contain the same information but it should package it in a way that is very different than an encyclopedia. Think of the difference between a geology textbook and a large collection of geology artices that more or less cover the same content (of course such a textbook would be hosted at Wikibooks). Each type of thing has a different purpose and each a different audience with different needs. That is the type of difference that should be the deciding factor about when to split; not the topic area.
A tabular/relational database is a different type of thing; it is not a book and its entries are not encyclopedia articles. So it is perfectly valid to create a separate project based on that platform. That is the role I would like to see Wikimedia Commons perform. But alas we already have a fork of the Commons called Wikispecies. Oh well - I lost that battle.
More people think they know about the world's animals than about its geological structure. It may be necessary to develop a Wikiatlas before a Wikigeology project.
Wikiatlas/Wikimaps is another type of project that would be fundamentally different from encyclopedia articles (although an atlas could make a good book). Hosting maps is one of the proposed functions of the Commons. In the future, GIS data could be added so that maps could be created on-the-fly.
I'm taking a class in Internet GIS applications right now and I think it would be neat to start fiddling with that sometime soon (late this semester at the earliest).
-- mav
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