[Wikipedia-l] Summary & questions was: Re: Taxoboxes.

[Daniel Mayer]

--- Marco Krohn <marco.krohn at web.de> wrote:
> Please don't bring it to a personal level who is more "unhelpful". I am sure 
> both sides (pro-/contra Wikipspecies) want the "best", in the sense that we 
> all want to create as much as possible high quality and free content in the 
> long run.

Point taken. I apologize to everybody I've been rude to. This is not an excuse
but I felt (and still feel) that the proposed version of Wikispecies would be a
fork that would greatly harm our coverage of species info in Wikipedia. 

I also fear the creation of Wikihistory, Wikiphysics, Wikiwar, Wikiwhatever
forks that would harm our coverage in those areas by diverting eyeballs
(readers) and fingers (contributors) to the separate specialized projects,
leaving Wikipedia impoverished in those areas. (although subject-specific
WikiReaders up to the size of entire encyclopedias can and should be evenutally
created. But those would be selected from Wikipedia.) 

The idea of creating a separate project that may be more suitable to
specialists is also counter to our open spirit, IMO (esp when the originator of
the Wikispecies idea suggested restricted editing of entries). 

I firmly believe that Wikipedia can contain all these specialized data by
creating detailed [[Biology of ...]] articles where needed and leaving a more
accessible and shorter summary in the animal/taxon article (most of the time
the amount of info - such as in Jimbo's FishBase example - could be put into
the main article on the species/taxon). 

Use of Wikimedia Commons to share common data (such as the taxoboxes and
elementboxes) between all Wikimedia projects and language versions is also a
great idea. As well as extending the category system by adding database
functions and adding an advanced search capability so that category-specific
searches and selects can can be conducted. 

-- mav


		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail