[WikiEN-l] Encyclopedia of Life kicks off

[geni]

On 26/02/2008, Steven Walling <steven.walling at gmail.com> wrote:
> Still seems to be either slow or down completely.
>
>  "...our exciting journey to document all species of life on Earth."? Isn't
>  quite uncontroversial among scientific circles to note that we haven't even
>  documented a large part of life on earth, much less enough to write
>  encyclopedia articles on each and every species? Seems a little bit of an
>  overblown goal.

They plan to add species as they are discovered.


>  Considering that "The immense amount of information in the encyclopedia is
>  being drawn from a variety of sources, including several existing specialist
>  databases such as AmphibiaWeb and FishBase.", it seems to me they are just
>  taking advantage of other people's hard work rather than building their own
>  encyclopedia.

Could be argued that we do that everytime we cite someone. Then there is Rambot.

>  As for, "The project will solicit the help of users to submit photos and
>  information for assessment by an authentication team.", sounds just like the
>  reason Nupedia failed and why Citizendium doesn't even have an article on
>  everyday species such as sheep.

They have $50m funding. Buys then a lot of requests for images. I
suggest we respond by raising the bar and requesting users submit
videos of species.

>  I just don't generally see why this would be engaging as a resource or as a
>  participatory endeavor, personally.

It is meant to  appeal more to traditional academics.

-- 
geni