[Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

[Benedikt Mandl]

> 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

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. 

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. Which doesn't mean that
wikipedia won't benefit from wikispecies - just the opposite.

Benedikt

-- 
NEU: Bis zu 10 GB Speicher für e-mails & Dateien!
1 GB bereits bei GMX FreeMail http://www.gmx.net/de/go/mail