Daniel Mayer wrote:
Jimbo - *all* the info at
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.cfm?genusname=Carcharodon&am…
should be in our corresponding Wikipedia article (along with the other stuff
you mention).
Absolutely.
*Why* in the world would we want to
1) Not have that info in Wikipedia but have it it a separate project
I don't think anyone has suggested that we should not have such
information in Wikipedia. We should.
2) Have it in both places and thus have to maintain it
in both places
This is clearly a point against WikiSpecies, but I don't find it a
very compelling point. The kind of scientific information in
WikiSpecies does not change that rapidly for most species, and in any
event, it will be very simple for contributors to copy from one
resource to the other...
It is important to understand that we don't control the question of
whether or not WikiSpecies will exist. It will. We can either do it
in-house, in which case the task of updating from one to the other can
be greatly simplified by software and common culture (i.e. Wikispecies
contributors will be Wikimedians, we will all know each other, we can
find common solutions).
There is zero reason to have a specialized project
when specialized
info is already most welcome in Wikipedia (usually in the form of
summaries that lead to more detailed treatments on separate
articles).
We have testimony from biologists who are eager to work on the project
that they would find it useful. Presumably, they understand that a
general purpose encyclopedia will cover much of the same ground and
more besides. It's just a different _kind_ of work, with a different
_purpose_ and a different _audience_.
Every example I've seen about what the entries in
this proposed fork
will consist of could be incorporated into one of more current (or
in the case of Wikimedia Commons) planned Wikimedia projects.
Is wiktionary a fork because the content in wiktionary could be
incorporated into wikipedia? I don't see how. It's a different sort
of work, and it is valuable *even if* we could legitimately have a
full encyclopedia article about every word in every language,
including such information as etymology, pronunciations, etc.
--Jimbo