[Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

[Stan Shebs]

Marco Krohn wrote:

>On Tuesday 24 August 2004 22:50, James R. Johnson wrote:
>
>>Why don't we see a few example web pages of what the wikispecies will look
>>like, or have several different examples, perhaps somewhere on Wikimedia,
>>so we can refine the interface/idea?
>>
>
>that would be nice, in particular for "outsiders" like me who probably do not 
>understand the core of the problem. What I have seen at fishbase.org and from 
>what I know about the scope of Wikipedia I don't see the problem yet. If 
>additional features are needed for wikispecies we should discuss if it's 
>possible to add these to the existing software.
>
>
One thing that may not be obvious at FishBase is that the screens
are mostly database dumps, not free text, and much updating of it
works by clicking on checkboxes and selecting from popups. I brought
this up a while back as a general consideration, namely how to
effectively support general databases in a wiki framework, but
didn't get much feedback. Tabular data in WP now is maintained
manually with considerable effort, and as the quantity grows, I
think it's gradually exceeding editors' capacity to manage.

>The only problem I see at the moment is the remark that articles should be 
>locked, which I can understand, but I think at least the accepted wikispecies 
>experts should be able to modify the article.
>
FishBase' main requirement of contributors, as I understand it, is
that a literature citation is required with each addition, and the
references get their own table in the database. I don't think a
"accepted wikispecies experts" concept is going to get very far
in any Wikimedia-sanctioned project...

Stan