[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikispecies

Tue Aug 24 11:34:34 UTC 2004

Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> I have read with amusement the arguments why the Wikispecies project may 
> not be a good idea by some of the ToL people. As much as I admire the 
> work that went into the ToL and still goes into the ToL, it is also a 
> project that has proven in the past that it is not open and willing to 
> cooperate outside of its own project. When I asked to consider 
> cooperation to come to a universal wikipedia taxobox, the answer was 
> look at all our previous discussions things have been decided,, no we 
> won't have that all over again.

I think you are bringing your own baggage to the debate here and are 
uncriticising most ToL participants unfairly.

Only mav has out right said he doesn't like the idea of a separate 
wikimedia wikispecies project.

I asked to proceed cautiously, wanting to understand more about the two 
projects would interact before giving it my support.

The other 20-odd people listed as ToL participants have said nothing at 
all on this thread, and some have indicated to Benedikt in private that 
they are very pleased about the project.

Further the ToL project participants _have_ tentatively gone down the 
internationalization route - the templates are called {{Regnum}} not 
{{Kingdom}} etc, for example. What other WikiProjects have decided to 
help out internationalization to the detriment of their local project? I 
know of none.

> The Wikispecies can have aspects that the current ToL does not have. It 
> could have all published names with links to the author and the people 
> making up the author attribute and obviously the publication. It could 
> specify the basionym. It could specify what the next revision of a 
> description is with the author, the persons, the publication data. It 
> could have the scientific description as they are inherently public 
> domain. It could have pictures from WikiCommons. It could have the nomen 
> nudum, the nomen

I agree that a proper database would be the right way to do this in the 
context of providing advanced searches, rather than trying to cobble 
something together with templates and categories in mediawiki.

That said, the information you specify would, I am sure, be welcome in 
ToL pages.