[Wikipedia-l] Re: wikispecies

[Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales]

Stan Shebs wrote:
> So the executive summary I get out of this is "people on en: didn't
> like my ideas, so I want to make a separate wiki".

I would put it a different way.  "The needs of a general purpose,
general audience encyclopedia differ from the needs of a professional
reference work, so we should move forward in exploring solutions that
meet the needs of both users while minimizing duplication of efforts."

> It would be great to have a common store for language-independent
> information, but not only is there a commons to serve just that role,
> but without higher-powered database and wiki machinery than is
> currently available or being worked on, wikispecies is inevitably
> going to be another pile of per-language data that partly duplicates
> wikipedia content.

It is my intention that we work early and hard on questions of
software development to meet these needs.  I am confident that
Benedict and others who are excited about this will be working hard to
find development help to get the additions they need.

Keep in mind: the initial mission of wikispecies.org is to resolve
these questions first.

--Jimbo