[Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

Wed Aug 25 14:38:36 UTC 2004

I understand Mav's reservations, even though I'm for a wikispecies.  Why
don't we simply have a trial w-species on that wikispecies.org site, try out
a few interface designs, and back-end stuff, and see if it'll work?  That
way, it won't be a wikiproject, but it will still exist and let people use
it, see if it's popular/used enough, and if it gets the go-ahead from
Media-Wiki, move whatever was done over to Media-Wiki.

James 

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Benedikt Mandl
Sent: Wednesday, August 25, 2004 5:07 AM
To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

> --- Benedikt Mandl <benedikt.mandl at gmx.at> wrote:
> > The defined target refered to the question whether wikispecies 
> > should
> cover
> > all species that were described or not. It would be wonderful if 
> > this
> was
> > possible, but yet it is too big of a project to define - others have
> done
> > that before and failed (see the busted http://www.all-species.org/).
> > 
>Daniel Mayer wrote: 
> OKay - you first state that others have tried and failed. 

Great - then let's have a look why "ALL species" failed:
1.) They started with a lot of noise, collected a lot of money and several
people as full term staff
2.) They rented offices as head quarters and hired experts to do some
programming for a search engine
3.) They wasted money on meetings, conventions and media events without
realising that they were - due to their organisational structure - totally
dependent on financial confidence
4.) The donations decreased after the dot-com crash
5.) Their targets were simply insane - a website for every existing species
within a human generation sounds nice in "New Scientist", but lacks of
feasibility
6.) They busted - much ado about nothing

I don't see any mistake that Wikispecies would make in a similar manner.
Another thing we can learn from www.all-species.org: there is a whole list
of the most eminent taxonomists, all of them supporting the idea of a
central database of species, indicating an urgent need for that. They all
took on the patronage (whatever that means in "ALL species" terms). Mav: HOW
MANY OF THEM DO YOU THINK SUPPORT A GENERAL ENCYCLOPEDIA? How many of them
already support the ToL in public?

We need a seperat approach to the species project in addition to wikipedia.
This is the only way to attract specialist authors and users. Mav, you made
it clear that you don't like wikispecies. Many other people disagree with
you and I think you should respect their wish for a wikispecies without
coming up with inappropriate brabbling about a "war".

Benedikt

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