[Wikipedia-l] Re: What is the purpose of this mailing list ??

[James R. Johnson]

Mav is right about wikispecies, and I propose also that we should say his
logic should apply to wiktionary.  We don't need a wiktionary, since all
that information is in the wikipedia already.  It's a duplication of
efforts, and dilutes our efforts and contributors's time.  Let's get rid of
it.

James




PS - I'm joking 

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 1:30 PM
To: wpmail at pcbartlett.com; wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: What is the purpose of this mailing list ??

Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
> The Tree of Life project's aim has always been to write about all 
> species. I think that ambitious aim has been part of the reason for 
> its success in becoming the largest wikiproject (tens of thousands of 
> articles), with the most contributors.

I fully support this, as I think it is an absolutely excellent thing to be
doing.

> I am personally disappointed that you want to put a stop to that - 
> presumably coming up with some guideline so that *some* species are 
> allowed articles, but not all.

Huh?  Why would we put a stop to that?  Why would we come up with guidelines
to prohibit some species from wikipedia?  I do not support any such thing.

> It also rides against the overwhelming consensus of this thread, as 
> mentioned in my other post. Whatever their position on wikispecies, 
> on-one has suggested crippling wikipedia.

Especially not me!  I wonder if you misunderstood something I said, because
I absolutely agree that Wikipedia and the Tree of Life project should have a
very ambitious goal of every species.

If anything, it makes more sense to say that I think that WikiSpecies should
be "crippled" in that it should not have references to Tigger and Jaws,
because it is not a general encyclopedic reference work but a specialized
database.  But I don't accept that this amounts to "crippling" anymore than
wiktionary is crippled by our insisting that a dictionary is not an
encyclopedia.

--Jimbo
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