Hello to all the Wikispecies-interested, which at the moment doesn't seem to be a very
large number. Yesterday I registered for the first time with Wikipedia, although I had
checked out a number of entries in a few visits during the past year. One of my primary
areas of interest is mycology, more specifically mushrooms and other large, fleshy fungi,
so when I came across a mention of Wikispecies and its apparent goal of listing, with
certain as yet unspecified additional information, all species of life on earth, I
experienced a few moments of great anticipation. However, after going to the website and
then checking out the discussion archives, I was wondering whether the whole project had
just died of lack of interest, or from getting impaled on that "fork" which was
mentioned in some discussions. (Joking! I'm not sure what was meant by the term, as
used, although it sounds as if the question was whether Wikispecies would be a stand-alone
site or merely other pages Wikipedia users would be led to via link when they wanted more
specific information than was found in a general article about, say, Chiroptera/Bats.)
So, before sharing some of the thoughts I had about what Wikispecies might become, I'd
like to hear whether it's just in temporary limbo until those working on it have a
little more time to really get going, or whether it's "terminal." I also
wanted to let you know about another site and project, Species 2000, which seems to have
similar, if not identical, objectives. You can get to it (I hope - I somehow came across
it months ago and marked it as a Favorite) via:
http://www.annual.sp2000.org, which, when
you do a search for, say, Amanita muscaria (the Fly Agaric mushroom), will take you to a
page listing synonyms of that species, with a link to the source database, Species
Fungorum, at:
www.SpeciesFungorum.org or
www.indexfungorum.org. The sites don't
provide much more than synonyms, species authors and dates, and species publication
information, but those are all important items of information for taxonomic purposes.
Hope to hear from somebody!
Jon
Jon Ellifritz
ellijon(a)earthlink.net
Why Wait? Move to EarthLink.