Today, I contacted David Darling, creator of the Astrobiology encyclopedia (http://www.angelfire.com/on2/daviddarling) and asked him about possible relations between our projects. Here is the reply I got. IMHO the link he asks for is OK for new articles or major improvements ("This article based on [http:... this one, with permission]"). Thought I'd ask the list first, though.
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: Astrobiology encyclopedia and Wikipedia Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 10:05:36 -0600 From: David Darling daviddarling@angelfire.com Reply-To: daviddarling@angelfire.com Organization: Angelfire (http://email.angelfire.mailcity.lycos.com:80) To: Magnus Manske magnus.manske@epost.de
Dear Magnus,
Thanks for your message and kind words about my encyclopedia. The wikipedia is a marvelous idea and resource, which I have used myself many times. I would be happy to "donate" or adapt some of my a-z entries to the wikipedia. Would it possible to include a link to my website at the end of each such article? I am quite happy to offer my time and effort freely on the Internet but must try to subsidise myself through (hopefully!) additional book sales that come about through visitors to my site.
Best wishes, David Darling
P.S. Your English appears to be flawless!
On Wed, 30 Oct 2002 15:13:14 Magnus Manske wrote:
Dear Dr. Darling,
I have just recently discovered your fascinating astrobiology encyclopedia (http://www.angelfire.com/on2/daviddarling/), and hope the following might be of interest to you.
Studying biology myself, I have worked on software and articles at Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org), a free internet encyclopedia. We are now approaching 90000 more-or-less complete articles, which are freely available under the GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License).
As our "members" (everyone can edit any article) come from every imaginable scientific background, we might have some information that would help you fill the (minor) gaps in your topic list, or complete others.
Likewise, we would be very interested in you becoming a contributor to our project. Though our articles are not credited to any author, a new and extensive article can be marked with a line like "this article is based on...".
Hoping the above will be helpful, or at least fun, Magnus Manske
P.S.: Please excuse my bad English, I am from Germany.
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