subject: [Wikipedia-l] Tabular data in Wikipedia (Wikispecies -> Wikicommons)

body:
I think there is a growing sentiment that people do not want to fork
Wikipedia to create Wikispecies.  This makes a lot of sense.  However, there
is something important that is needed for Wikispecies which Wikipedia does
not provide: efficient access of tabular data.

Think of what we would want to be able to do with Wikispecies.  Yes, the
simplest of them could be handled by categories, and taxoboxes are a kludgy
solution to some of the data input, but now what if I want a list of all
endangered species in the phylum chordata?  There's just no efficient way to
get that information from Wikipedia, even if I have access to the entire
database dump.

It is possible that Wikipedia could adapt to handle this type of data, but
this is a somewhat fundamental shift in the concept of a wiki.  We would
essentially need an open access database, where even the table structure
itself can be modified, complete with a history mechanism which can somehow
allow us to revert poorly thought changes.

There is another benefit to Wikispecies, and it is the same thing we're
seeing with the proposal of Wikicommons.  Species classification information
is largely language-neutral.  It would be nice if we could somehow have a
single database for all this information, and simply use it on the
language-specific pages.  Once again, this could be done within Wikipedia
though, and this change would be somewhat less of a fundamental shift.  In
essence, we would simply move the taxoboxes to a common database, in latin,
and translate into the local language on the fly (regnum->kingdom, etc.).
There is a bit of coding involved here, but once Wikicommons is properly set
up a lot of it will already be done.

In the end, I'm opposed to creating a Wikispecies, at least as a Wikimedia
project.  I think our efforts are better focussed on creating a system which
can incorporate Wikispecies, Wikipeople, and all the other wikiprojects
together under one roof.  I think there are a lot of steps along the way,
and Wikicommons is probably the logical first one.

Anthony


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Russian pictures - copyright rules

body:
> This is certainly incorrect.  It *is* widely believed that Soviet texts
> dating prior to 1973 (when the USSR became party to the relevant
> convention) may be freely used and considered public domain, but this is
> almost certainly untrue from a legal standpoint, and copyrighted
> material produced subsequent to that date is as protected as this
> message (moreso, perhaps).

The relevant US law is Title 17, Chapter 1, Section 104

http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/104.html

In essense, if the work was first published in a country which was not a
party to a copyright agreement with the United States at the time, it is
mostly likely not covered under US copyright law.  Note that I only say most
likely.  I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty
details and exceptions.  Also, the laws of other countries will likely
differ.

Anthony


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Daniel Kinzler

subject: [Wikitech-l] Advancing the concept of categories

body:
Hello all.

In the german WP, we have massive problems devising a consistent and
useful pattern for categorisation. After some trying and discussiong, it
seems that the software laks some features that would make categories a
truly powerful tool of structuring the WP. So my question is how hard it
would be to implement those features. Here are the once I personally
(and quite a few others, too) feel are the most important:

* Search over cross-sections of categories, an a sensible syntax for
linking to such sections.

* a concept of implicite membership in categories, such that members of
a sub-categorie are automatically members of the parent-categorie(s)
(transitive covers). For category-display, this should be optional. For
cross sections, this should be the default behaviour.

* A disctinction between a categorie being a subcategory, or just
belonging to another categorie, just as Articles do.

would it be feasable to put this features into the software? What would
be the problems? how soom could we have such features?

For more information about the troubles we are having, see
<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Diskussion:Kategorien> (german)
For some of my thoughts and ideas about this problems, see
<http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Duesentrieb/Semantic_Wiki_Web>
(english).

Thank you very much,
Daniel <http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Duesentrieb>


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
>
>
>>Daniel Mayer wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>Looks essentially what a wikispecies should look like, I guess.  I guess
>>>>
>>>>
>>a
>>
>>
>>>>w-species would focus more on the biology, history, genealogy, genetics,
>>>>
>>>>
>>or
>>
>>
>>>>what, so that it's different from the w-pedia?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>All that should be covered in the Wikipedia article.
>>>
>>>
>>My impression is that Wikispecies' goal is to catalog *every* existing
>>(and extinct?) species.  We're talking about, what, hundred thousands
>>of articles.  This is similar to documenting every town and village,
>>no matter what the size, and such attempts have historically not been
>>appreciated within Wikipedia.  This is why I think Wikispecies should
>>be developed separately.
>>
>>
>
>A great many species will only be covered at the genus level since there isn't
>much known about them individually. This is not a problem.
>
>The overlap between this proposed project and Wikipedia is simply too great and
>will thus harm our coverage of taxa and species by dividing that aspect between
>two different projects.
>
>-- mav
>
>
>
>_______________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.
>http://promotions.yahoo.com/goldrush
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>
Mav,

What is this overlap? Given that ToL only covers the most recent names
and loads of names have been validly published and still have relevance,
I fail to see where the overlap is. You presume that little is known
about many species, when there is traction among the serious amateurs
and the professionals, you will be amazed how much is known about things
on a species, subspecies, variety and forma level.

The scientific descriptions of taxons are inherently public domain,
there is no single resource that collects them. I know of a Yahoo group
that has some descriptions on line for cacti. There are more of these
small resources. By having an open place where these things can be
posted with some assurance that they will remain there, you already have
something that adds value beyond the current ToL and gives validation to
the idea of a Wikispecies.

Please start thinking, you will see that there is more to life than the ToL.

Thanks,
  GerardM


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Logs of DOOM

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> Let me be the first to tell you that this is mucho appreciated, while at
> the same time demanding a converter for the existing logs into the new
> table :-)

I'm working on that. The tricky part will be reversing the date
formatting. Bleah!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040824/780153a0/attachment.pgp>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Link placeholder problems

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> The sequence of events should be:
>
> * Text is added to the buffer, including placeholder comments
> * OutputPage::output is called
>   - Placeholders are processed
>   - Placeholders are turned off using $sk->postParseLinkColour(false)
>   - Control is passed to $sk->outputPage()
>      - Navigation links are constructed by calling Skin::makeLink() and
>        outputting them directly, no more post-processing is done

Various special pages construct additional bits such as the subtitle in
their own function, which happens before passing to $sk->outputPage().

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 253 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20040824/78a90621/attachment.pgp>


list: wikien-l

from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dartmouth follies

body:
RickK wrote:

> Unfortunately, even though the class assignment required that the
> articles created by the students meet Wikipedia requirements, now that
> most of them have been listed on VfD, the instructor is trying to
> claim that they do meet our requirements.  It seems if the vast
> majority of the articles have made it to VfD, then not only has the
> majority of the class failed the assignment, but the instructor
> doesn't understand the nature of Wikipedia.  If the majority of a
> class fails an assignment, that has to say something about the
> instructor, as well.

I phoned the instructor a couple of days ago.

I am almost certain that RickK is wrong in saying that "most of [the
articles created by the students] have been listed on VfD." I checked
out one or two that the instructor happened to refer to indirectly, and
they're fine. They're almost models of what we'd like to see on
Wikipedia. Since they're a) not obviously connected to Dartmouth and b)
first-rate articles, they never got listed on VfD, and I don't believe
they ever will be.

One purpose of the exercise is to give nonprogramming students hands-on
experience in a collaborative an open-source project is like.

The persona he projects in private emails and on the phone is so
different from the uncooperative persona he projects in Wikipedia VfD
discussions that at one point I actually wondered whether it was the
same person. It is. When I commented on the apparent personality
difference he said something to the effect that he'd been on USENET for
years, knows a flamewar when he sees one, and was just determined to
defend his students.

The instructor's perception is that there is actually an anti-Dartmouth
animus among WIkipedian. I would have said both were wrong, but after a
recent "second wave" I am actually starting to perceive such an animus.

Many Wikipedians' perception is that a group of Dartmouth students are
systematically and deliberately spamming Wikipedia with a flood of
Dartmouth-boosting promotional pieces.

The well-written assignment directs students to all the places you'd
want them to be directed, such as "What Wikipedia is not."
Unfortunately they call for creating entire articles. The instructor
commented that he didn't know how you could give an objective grade to
"improving an article."

The pieces that are starting to arouse such irritation are not all that
terrible. In most cases, what seems to me to have happened is that some
feature of campus life that should have been a line or a short
paragraph in the Dartmouth College has become the subject of a
full-page article that uses the sort of breezy, promotional language
that is appropriate to a college's website, or a campus freshman
resource guide. We should patiently cut 'em down, clean 'em up, and
stick 'em in the Dartmouth College article and make the articles
redirects. No big deal, except that people resent having to do the
work. There's not even any big rush about it. Who cares if there's a
page up for a month or so lauding the wonders of the Nelson A.
Rockefeller Center? These article all fall squarely in the "borderline"
category. Get them cleaned up, but we don't need to drop everything and
do it right away.

Not that it matters, but the instructor personally seems to fall
somewhere in between the extremes of the deletionist/inclusionist
spectrum. He cited "Internet is shit" as a good example of an article
that needed deletion. (And I hadn't mentioned it. He knows more about
Wikipedia than I had thought). But he's uncomfortable with measuring
"notability" and would set the bar lower than today's VfD community
consensus would set it.

I'm getting Wikistressed about all this, by the way. Here's a lovely
opportunity for what should have been a positive interaction. It all
has a beautiful tragic Rashomon-like quality to it. I wish people would
just cool down instead of piling on. If you've dealt with too many
Dartmouth articles and your patience has run out, then deal with
something else and stay away from them. Come back in a month and if
they're not all cleaned up by then, start cleaning them up.

And I think we really need to ask whether something about VfD is
actually _inducing_ the demeanor shown by User:Pcw in VfD discussions.

Just for the record, so there's no misunderstanding, I think every
Dartmouth article placed on VfD by RickK is royally VfD-worthy, and
sparkling examples of article meriting "ruthless editing" (or what some
editor called a "POVectomy"). I just happen to think that the right
resolution for most of them is trim them down to 5 to 20% of their
current size, merge into Dartmouth College, and redirect.

Sir, as I have said, it is a small college, and yet there are those of
us who are starting to see it as a PITA. But, personally, if I can't
judge an article on the basis of the content of the article, rather
than on the presumed organizational affiliations of the article's
authors, then I don't think I should be discussing that article's
deletion.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


from_name: John

subject: [Wikitech-l] new sister project (off of home page)

body:
On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 16:45:44 -0700, Edward Peschko <esp5 at pge.com> wrote:
> hey all,
>
> If I wanted to get a new sister project started off of the home page,
> who would I talk to? What would I do? The project I have in mind doesn't exactly
> fit any of the categories listed, yet I feel it would be a useful addition.
>
> so - do I write a proposal? Discuss it on this mailing list? Go through meta-wiki?
> Or some other method?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Ed

You could elaborate on your proposed sister project here on the
mailing. I'm personally curious what you have in mind and I'm sure if
we knew more about it we could better direct you to someone.

-John


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>> [...] You presume that little is known about many species, when there
>> is traction among the serious amateurs and the professionals, you
>> will be amazed how much is known about things on a species,
>> subspecies, variety and forma level.
>>
> That's because there are many for which little is known - I just
> recently added a beetle family (Glaresidae) for whom none of the
> larvae have never been identified, nor is anything known about their
> life history, not even what they eat.
>
>> The scientific descriptions of taxons are inherently public domain,
>> there is no single resource that collects them. I know of a Yahoo
>> group that has some descriptions on line for cacti. There are more of
>> these small resources. By having an open place where these things can
>> be posted with some assurance that they will remain there, you
>> already have something that adds value beyond the current ToL and
>> gives validation to the idea of a Wikispecies.
>>
> The implied comment here is that really-detailed WP content runs
> the risk of being deleted, but as far as I know that's never
> happened to species descriptions, and there are a bunch of valued
> pages discussing obsolete taxa. Adding detailed info and making
> sure it's accurate is simply a painstaking process, and there
> aren't very many people doing it; most of the time I just get
> the basics written down and move on, on the theory that breadth
> is more useful than depth, if one only has so much time. For some
> beetle families WP now has the sole English description to be found
> online anywhere, believe it or not, so we're not quite to the point
> of needing every beetle species yet.
>
> So the value of a separate wikispecies hangs on where Wikipedia
> draws the line on its content; as far as I know, no one has
> ever actually drawn a line at less than "everything known about
> a species".
>
> By contrast, if I proposed importing my database of 147,000+ types
> of postage stamps, about half of all types known, I bet a lot of
> people would say "too much detail for the encyclopedia!" :-)
>
> Stan
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
Stan,
When you want to import your database on stamps, I personally would not
mind. Propably it would be a great thing if it is were accompanied by
pictures. I am pretty sure there are loads of people who would really
welcome it. It would make wikipedia an important resource on stamps. On
nl: we have a chess entheuasiast. He has written a zillion articles on
chess including chess players. Why not ?

A scientific description of a taxon is in Latin sometimes in English. It
is latin gooblediegook. It is relevant for those who can read it. I fail
to see that several hundred thousant articles like this (overly
optimistic, this will only happen in 25 years if at all, not that these
articles do not exist) would be appreciated by the average Wikipedia
user. When an authorised version of the scientific description is
uploaded, it should be locked against further editing. The value is in
it being the original description.

I do and did not imply that info would be removed/deleted from
wikipedia. I do imply that wikipedia is not the environment for these
kinds of information. As an aside again; I would definetly have a
wikispecies article refer to the articles in the wikipedia. ToL is a
valuable resource, it can be a better resource if cooperation is
possible. Then again it is not only en:wikipedia that would be great as
a cooperating partner. Fishbase was mentioned, there is IPNI, there are
many resources. The more cooperation the better the quality. Again some
of it will rub off on wikispecies some on ToL on en: nl: de: fr:

As to the Glaresidae family, GREAT, it proves my point that ToL is a
valuable resource that is continually increasing in quality. Wikispecies
will not detract from that.
PS on http://www.zin.ru/Animalia/Coleoptera/eng/glaresi.htm there is a
picture. As this is a Russian website it may be public domain..

Thanks,
   Gerard


from_name: Nathan Russell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Dartmouth class project now on VFD

body:
On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 07:25:12 +0800, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> As someone who has used WP in teaching before, I must say the wording
> of the assignment is quite terse, and likely inadequate. It's not
> clear what the goal is - article writing, learning markup, interaction
> with Wikipedians, learning NPOV, etc. An assignment which is too open
> ended or too loosely defined results in exactly what we see - a
> selection of articles (sadly) consistent with stereotypes of Dartmouth
> such as beer pong, ski team, fraternities. No wonder folks early on
> felt it was troll bait. :)

As a recent college grad, I can confirm that neither beer pong, ski
teams, nor fraternities are unique to Dartmouth :).

> In the future, a better option would be to put up constraints or
> "bumper guards", such as pointing to existing WP lists as a starting
> point. Suggestions include:
>
> [[Wikipedia:Most wanted stubs]]
> [[Wikipedia:Most_wanted_articles]]
> [[Special:Shortpages]]
>
> Or, tell students to link in at least "N" number of articles in:
> [[Wikipedia:Orphaned_Articles]]
>
> I've started a new section with these in
> [[Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects#Considerations_and_suggestions]]

Good thought.  The vast majority of student work is positive
contributions; some of your students, I've noticed, have problems with
copyright, which may be cultural, or simple carelessness - but they
added original content.  An assignment to "create two articles" _will_
lead to things like articles on drinking games, if only because
students can't think of subjects we don't cover.

Nathan/Pakaran


from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New Wikipedia Formation

body:
I have a question on new wikipedias.  When a new wp is started, is it simply
a blank space, or are there a few stubs for the translators to use?  I was
wondering, if the "100 necessary articles" were included as a basis for each
new wikipedia, giving each a base size of at least 100 articles, and it
would give them a head start in articles.

James


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Link placeholder problems

body:
On Tue, Aug 24, 2004 at 11:10:34AM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> The link placeholders are causing lots of problems in 1.4: links that do
> not appear in the body text end up with the placeholder comments but are
> never replaced with the actual links.
>
> For example, the user name in the subtitle for Special:Contributions.
> This may be behind http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/206 also.
>
> This is kind of a problem. Do we need a way to turn the placeholdering
> on and off, or should we have distinct makeLink* functions for making
> placeholder links?

My understanding is that postParseLinkColour is used to switch between
the two modes.

Regards,

JeLuF


subject: [WikiEN-l] Dartmouth class project now on VFD

body:
>  Apologies in advance should this be construed as rude, but...

Apology accepted.  I've found nothing else in your email worthy of reply.
Don't make this personal.  I've given my opinion, if you disagree with it,
feel free to comment on its merits and not resort to ad hominem attacks.

Anthony


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New Wikipedia Formation

body:
On Tuesday 24 August 2004 21:22, James R. Johnson wrote:
> I have a question on new wikipedias.  When a new wp is started, is it
> simply a blank space, or are there a few stubs for the translators to use?
> I was wondering, if the "100 necessary articles" were included as a basis
> for each new wikipedia, giving each a base size of at least 100 articles,
> and it would give them a head start in articles.

AFAICT it just consists of [[Main Page]]. When I started writing jbo:, I
promptly moved it to [[ralju papri]], translated general article names (such
as "music" and "geography") from other Main Pages, and copied the coelacanth
article (which I wrote the original version of in Lojban before translating
to English). The taxobox had all the templates missing, so I added them.

phma
--
li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New projects (was Re: Developers needed!)

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I am interested in such a project, and I think it could have a life on
>>its own, with some of its information being in wikipedia as well.
>>I tend to consider Wikipedia as a "generalist" encyclopedia, which
>>should try to stay simple, readable to most, and avoid jargon and very
>>specialised information. Wikipedia can be a central reference, with
>>surrounding projects, smaller, and more specialised.
>>
>>
>
>Such a project must not overlap with Wikipedia or any other Wikimedia project
>in any significant way. For example, creating a war and conflict Wikimedia
>project would be unwise since that would divert energy now used to improve that
>aspect of Wikipedia. But that is not to say that creating a textbook on the
>subject would be a bad idea to have on Wikibooks (in fact, such a textbook
>would be most welcome). However, that is different than having individual
>articles on individual topics (which is the role of an encyclopedia).
>
>
>
>>I still need to see better what this project should be, but I think it
>>should be separated, but with strong interactions with Wikipedia.
>>
>>
>
>It sounds like an openly editable relational database is needed. That way small
>amounts of info could be used and searched for in Wikispecies while prose and
>encyclopedic info can be kept in Wikipedia. Such software could also be used
>for other database info on just about anything, so limiting this to just
>species and taxa may be unwise.
>
>But I will not support any fork of our bilogy section. Any Wikispecies project
>*must* be complimentary to Wikipedia and cause no harm to it. The burden of
>proof is on those who want to start such a project if they want it to be hosted
>by Wikimedia.
>
>This also brings up a very important general point: We need to develop a clear
>process for starting new projects (language versions are a separate matter).
>For example, proposals need to be made, then debated and refined. A list of any
>software 'must haves' and wants needs to be developed (these are very
>significant for Wikispecies) and then we need to determine if the project can
>start without the 'must haves' or if it has to wait until the software is
>ready. An assement on whether or not the proposed project concept could be
>absorbed into an existing Wikimedia project and if that proposed project would
>welcome also needs to be conducted. Pros and cons need to be devloped. Then we
>need to have a Wikimedia-wide vote to certify the project and launch it (if the
>software needed to run it has been developed).
>
>-- mav
>
>
>
>__________________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
>http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>
Mav,
I remain amazed about the arguments you have against wikispecies, and I
really wonder what you base your comments on. I am a database guy. I
have created a relational database specifically for the taxonomy of
plants and I *know* that this does not cover all the bases. Then again,
the Wikimedia product is based on MySQL which can do relational things.
The current wikimedia software is a great starting point to find out the
requirements. What is the point of starting coding without a spec. Specs
have not been written in commission. Specs are not democratic. Specs are
meritocratic.We do not know what is needed at this point in time.

I have put many arguments and I have not seen one refuted so far.

When Wikispecies is a resource, you can have all scientific publication
resulting in a valid scientific names for one plant. This is not usefull
in Wiktionary and it is outside of the current scope of the ToL.

To have a war, you need warring sentiments. There is no need for those.
It will be a different public. It is similar with wikipedia and
wiktionary. When an article on Wikipedia is only a dictionary definition
you plaster {{beg}} on it and possibly copy the defition to wiktionary;
everybody is a winner. The same with wikispecies and wikicommons, a load
of pictures a load of scientific publications adding up to resources
that can be used on en:ToL, nl:ToL, fr:ToL. It is the same thing as with
nl:wikipedia, we do not mind the en:ToL for us it is a resource not a
competitor. We can be a resource for en:ToL. We do have species for
which there is no article on en:Wikipedia. That does not mean we are in
a state of war !!

Wikispecies will not be a textbook, it will be a resource. The value
will increase with a growing amount of data. As such the highest value
will be in the en:ToL as this will be the starting point for a lot of
Wikispecies information. It will refer to en:ToL, it will use the
Taxoboxes. From there it will grow. It will also link to the other
wikipedia and as a consequence have data not available on en:. Who is
losing out, who stands to benefit ?

When specific software is created for Wikispecies, it will exist with
specifity. It will be created for taxonomic use. It does not mean that
relational stuff will not be possible for other projects as that is a
function of MySQL and has nothing to do with Wikispecies.

One final question, when a project is proposed, when enough people are
interested in it, why would you oppose it. What do you have to lose?
What is it to you? This is an open project, if you do not like it, do
not contribute to it.

Nobody is saying this is going to be a winner, only time will tell. The
only thing is, there are people who think it may be valuable and it may
have potential. They want to find out what the possibilities are. They
can do this inside of wikimedia and they can do this outside wikimedia.
Having it within wikimedia gives Wikimedia more weight not less.

Thanks,
    Gerard


from_name: Till Westermayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Hi Mav,

>-+- 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/).
>>
>> In terms of users: I think that there actually would be some
>> overlapping information of wikipedia and wikispecies - for that
>> reason a stron connection between the two would be very
>> important and beneficial for both. On the other hand I think
>> that the niche for a specifically biology dedicated, taxonomic
>> database such as wikispecies is big and the potential potential
>> applications different enough to justify the existance of a
>> wikispecies in addition to the wikipedia.

>OKay - you first state that others have tried and failed. Then you
>state that it would better to fork this aspect of Wikipedia into a
>separate project while maintaining overlap. How is dividing the
>potential workforce between two projects going to be successful?

What do you think of the proposal I sketched out somewhere further up in
this thread -- to make Wikispecies not a different database, but only a
different interface on the same db, maybe using additional tables,
indices?
 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

body:
--- Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:

> Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > The overlap between this proposed project and Wikipedia is simply
> > too great and will thus harm our coverage of taxa and species by
> > dividing that aspect between two different projects.
>
> Much like IMDb threatens Wikipedia's coverage of movies and actors.
> They should close down immediately.  Why don't they.

That is a total strawman Lars - I expect better from you.

First, IMDb is NOT a Wikimedia project.

Second, I already said that Wikispecies could be started right now, but not as
a Wikimedia project without a great deal of justification about its worth and
assurance that it would not harm existing projects.

What others do outside of Wikimedia is beyond our control. But at least we can
prevent internal forks and fragmentation.

-- mav

_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/goldrush


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikispecies

body:
On Tuesday 24 August 2004 09:06, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> One thing that Wikispecies will not have is having a high reliance on
> "vernacular names". Vernacular names are highly un-scientific with same
> names covering many species, with many species without vernacular names,
> with species being covered by many often regional names.

Two examples: quandong and cohosh. Quandong is the fruit of the sandalwood
tree, of which two species are called bitter quandong and desert quandong;
but the blue quandong is in a completely different family. Cohosh is the name
for any of several medicinal North American berries; three of them, red,
white, and black, are in Ranunculaceae, while blue cohosh isn't.

> When Wikispecies is to interface from wikipedia, one obivous place to
> put the links are the Taxoboxes. They would relate to the current
> correct name for a taxon. This would imply that this should be a two-way
> street. When Wikspecies decides that a name is not longer the currently
> valid name; it would flag the taxobox as problematic.

How do you handle disagreements between taxonomists? There are splitters and
lumpers: splitters may see seven species of Taraxacum in a region, and
lumpers say they're all T. officinale.

> The problem with one unified database is, that all users would find all
> wikispecies data in the wikipedia space. But, WHICH wikipedia space?
> Consequently having one database is impossible. As to the Wikispecies
> being multi-lingual, at this moment in time two languages are the
> languages of taxonominal science: English and Latin. So the question is
> why should Wikispecies be multi-lingual, and should it be Latin or
> English :) ? Obviously, Wikispecies would be a resource available from
> within all wikipedia by the same syntax.

I think it should be in English and Latin, and should have links to Wikipedia
in all languages. Here's an article in which a new species, Salvia divinorum,
was named and described: http://sagewisdom.org/epling&jativa.html . The
article is in English, except for the description of the plant in Latin.

phma
--
li fi'u vu'u fi'u fi'u du li pa


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anet Dartmouth

body:
This issue with Darmouth brings into the present a something I've thought
about concerning Wikipedia for some time.

On the one side, there is a real concern for the quality of content, which
is clearly under attack from many quarters. Wackos who believe that it is
electrical radiation that imposes the speed of light as the ultimate limit
of acceleration, who insist that the Wikipedian philosphy of accepting all
POVs means that we have to include their own "unique" POV; people who are
obsessed at defending their national pride by insisting that a fellow
citizen actually invented the toaster; the trolls who enjoy stirring the
pot by seing just how plausible they can make an unreasonable argument
sound; & countless individuals who believe that the act of reverting any
edit trumps any argument, no matter how well argued.

Bah! If I don't recognize the contributor -- or even more clearly, if that
person is editting from an IP number -- I'll just consider her/him/it a
troublemaker, list the articles that person produces on VfD & revert all of
her/his/its edits as "vandalism".

On the other side, there is the low barrier of entry to Wikipedia that
Academia lacks -- allowing the well-read amateur to add vital new information
that might not make it into other fora because it does not have (1) the
right credentials attached; (2) observe the right prevalent orthodoxy; or
(3) simply needs a little more coaching -- which an isolated amateur or
"info-nerd" won't find any other way. There is something admittedly daunting
about Academia & profesional research that intimidates beginners -- who
too often discover that the professionals realy aren't that professional
in terms of resources, behavior, or analysis.

However Wikipedia, by its "less than perfect, but better than it was
before" approach helps to demolish this elitist misconception.

One of the vital dynamics to Wikipedia is fact that to make any edit stick,
one has to be willing to engage in a conversation about it. One has to not
only convince an audience that a given POV is plausible, but that the
person advocating it is credible & reasonable. Unfortunately, not all who
come to add to Wikipedia are willing to engage in a conversation about their
contributions (nationalists being a prime example of this reluctance, but
everyone is guilty of this reluctance at one time or another), but hopefully
those of us who understand the importance of this dynamic will continue to
advocate it, & keep Wikipedia vibrant despite all of the pressures against
it.

And if I may allowed to be chauvanistic for a moment, I think this ideal
is a valuable part of Western Civilization that needs to be taught to the
rest of the world. We should respect other people's POV, we should be
willing to explain our own POV, & that there should be a fair & beneficial
exchange between them.

</soapbox>

Geoff


from_name: Duncan Harris

body:
I've gone through most of these article, cross referencing all those on vfd.
  Some are pretty good, only needing minor sweeps, but for every good
article, there's atleast one bad one.  The pcw has a responsibility to
provide us with a list of articles worked on.  He can accept what twaddle he
likes for his assignment, but yes this does reflect badly on him and the
university (especially with one idiot trying to defend the reserve football
team by impersonating RickK).  I think people sweeping this rubbish should
give themselves a round of applaus. pcw should be warned not to attempt this
again in a similar form unless he changes the wording of his assignment, as
it may constitute organised vandalism.

_________________________________________________________________
MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus


from_name: Marco Krohn

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

body:
On Tuesday 24 August 2004 17:21, Benedikt Mandl wrote:

> In terms of users: I think that there actually would be some overlapping
> information of wikipedia and wikispecies - for that reason a stron
> connection between the two would be very important and beneficial for both.
> On the other hand I think that the niche for a specifically biology
> dedicated, taxonomic database such as wikispecies is big and the potential
> potential applications different enough to justify the existance of a
> wikispecies in addition to the wikipedia.
>
> When it comes to biologists to contribute contents, I am sure that it will
> be MUCH easier to convince them to work on a species directory with pure
> bio-applications rather than a general encyclopedia. Which doesn't mean
> that wikipedia won't benefit from wikispecies - just the opposite.

It might be that it is easier in the beginning to convince experts to
contribute to a specialized catalogue than to a general encyclopedia. On the
other hand I know that we already have experts in other areas who work on the
Wikipedia.

For example Uwe Kills who is a professor for biological oceanography or Axel
Boldt who is a professor for mathematics. Just have a look to how many
articles Axel Boldt has produced http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:AxelBoldt
and I never heard that he asked for a special wikipedia which deals with
mathematics exclusively.

If it is possible to incorporate highly specialized topics from mathematics
into Wikipedia then I can't see a reason why this shouldn't be possible for
the biological field. I had a look at fishbase.org and I found nothing which
would prevent adding similar information to Wikipedia.

Perhaps I just do not understand sufficently the problems that come with
taxonomy, but I would prefer it if we don't split our resources and if
Wikipedia becomes the resource for _all_ human knowledge. At least this is
what I and probably many others dream is.

best regards,
  Marco


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

body:
On Tuesday 24 August 2004 22:50, James R. Johnson wrote:
> Why don't we see a few example web pages of what the wikispecies will look
> like, or have several different examples, perhaps somewhere on Wikimedia,
> so we can refine the interface/idea?

that would be nice, in particular for "outsiders" like me who probably do not
understand the core of the problem. What I have seen at fishbase.org and from
what I know about the scope of Wikipedia I don't see the problem yet. If
additional features are needed for wikispecies we should discuss if it's
possible to add these to the existing software.

The only problem I see at the moment is the remark that articles should be
locked, which I can understand, but I think at least the accepted wikispecies
experts should be able to modify the article.

best regards,
  Marco


body:
AFAIK and IANAL, Russian laws on copyright do not exist. Therefore
Russian resources are different. It may be that after the collapse of
the USSR the copyright laws have changed, but I am not aware of that.

PS correct me where I am wrong.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

body:
Marco Krohn wrote:

>On Tuesday 24 August 2004 22:50, James R. Johnson wrote:
>
>
>>Why don't we see a few example web pages of what the wikispecies will look
>>like, or have several different examples, perhaps somewhere on Wikimedia,
>>so we can refine the interface/idea?
>>
>>
>
>that would be nice, in particular for "outsiders" like me who probably do not
>understand the core of the problem. What I have seen at fishbase.org and from
>what I know about the scope of Wikipedia I don't see the problem yet. If
>additional features are needed for wikispecies we should discuss if it's
>possible to add these to the existing software.
>
>The only problem I see at the moment is the remark that articles should be
>locked, which I can understand, but I think at least the accepted wikispecies
>experts should be able to modify the article.
>
>best regards,
>  Marco
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>
The lockdown would be only for very specific resources; they are the
verbatim text of the original publication of a taxon. The only need for
these to be changed is when they are not verbatim. Consequently, they
are perfect or they are useless for scientific reasons. At this moment
in time there are none on any wikipedia.

This is an example of  such a text: it was published in Succulenta in
1971 - 50(2) a Dutch magazine on succulents. Hence the second part in
Dutch. The publication is valid for it is in Latin.
*********************************************************

*Frailea cataphracta* (Dams) Br. et R *var. tuyensis* Buining et Moser
var. nova

A. F. H. BUINING

*Corpus* solitarium, 3-3,5 cm altum, ad 4 cm diam., griseoviride ad
cinereum. *Costae* ad 20, planissimae, sulco plano obacure-viridi
separatae, ad 5 mm latae; sub areolia stria lunata atro-viridis.
*Areolae* ex longo rotundae, nudae vel vix aliquo tomenti brunnei
tectae. *Spinae* pectinate positae, utrimque 4, infra brunneae, densatae
ut cepa, ceterum pallide-tornese ad vitrese, ad 1 mm longae. *Flores*
infundibuliformes, 24 mm longi, 20 mm lati, pallidecitrini.
*Pericarpellum* 6 mm longum, 5 mm latum, infra nudum, ceterum fulvis
saetis albipilosumque. *Receptaculum* 4 mm longum, saetis pallidefuivis
albipilosumque. *Folia perianthii* exteriora spathulata. apice
acutissimo, alba ad lurida, linae centrali pallide-viridi; *interiora*
spathulata, acuta, pallidissime citrina. *Stylus* 11 mm longus,
pallide-flavus. *Stigmata* 5, ad 4 mm longa, pallide-flava. *Stamina*
primaria 10 mm longa, circum stylum inserta, pallide-flava; *secundaria*
5 mm longa, pallide-flava. *Antherae* 0,8 mm longae, flavo-albescentes.
*Camera nectarea* 0,5 mm lata, aperta. *Caverna seminifere* 3 mm longa,
3,5 mm lata. *Fructus* rotundus, 8 mm diam., brevibue saetis fulvia
lanaque alba*. Semen* lintriforme, 2 mm longum, 1,6 mm latum, spadiceum,
nitidum; *testa* levis, lineamentis reticulatis. *Habitat* ad Capilla
tuya ad meridiam Paraguari Paraguay

*Lichaam* enkel, 3-3,5 cm hoog, tot 4 cm diam., grijsgroen askleurig.
*Ribben* tot 20, zeer vlak, gescheiden door donkergroene vlakke groef,
breed tot 5 mm; onder de areolen een halve maanvormige zwartgroene
streep. *Areolen* ovaal, kaal of met nauwelijks bruin vilt. *Dorens*
kamvormig gesteld, aan weerszijde 4, onderaan bruin, uiachtig verdikt,
verder licht hoornkleurig tot glasachtig, tot 1 mm lang. *Bloem*
trechtervormig, 24 mm lang, 20 mm breed, licht citroengeel.
*Pericarpellum* 6 mm lang, 5 mm breed, onderaan kaal, verder met
lichtbruine borstels en witte haren. *Receptaculum* lang 4 mm, met licht
geelbruine borstels en witte haren. *Buitenste perianthbladeren*
spatelvormig, met naaldfijne punt, wit tot vuilgeel, met zachtgroene
middenstreep; *binnenste* spatelvormig, toegespits, zeer licht
citroengeel. *Stijl* 11 mm lang, lichtgeel. *Stempels* 5, tot 4 mm lang,
lichtgeel. *Primaire meeldraden* 10 mm lang, rond stijl geplant,
lichtgeel; secundaire 5 mm lang, lichtgeel. *Helmknopjes* 0,8 mm lang,
geelwit. *Nektarruimte* 0,5 mm breed, open. *Zaadholte* 3 mm lang, 3,5
mm breed. *Vrucht* rond, 8 mm diam., met korte geelbruine borstels en
witte wolharen. *Zaad* bootvormig, 2 mm lang, 1,6 mm breed,
kastanjebruin, glanzend; *testa* glad met netvormige tekening.
*Groeiplaats* Paraguay, bij Capilla tuya, ten zuiden van Paraguari.
************************************************************


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New Wikipedia Formation

body:
On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:22:45 -0400, James R. Johnson
<modean52 at comcast.net> wrote:
> I have a question on new wikipedias.  When a new wp is started, is it simply
> a blank space, or are there a few stubs for the translators to use?  I was
> wondering, if the "100 necessary articles" were included as a basis for each
> new wikipedia, giving each a base size of at least 100 articles, and it
> would give them a head start in articles.

There's an ongoing project to provide simplified versions of the 1000
articles every Wikipedia should have. These are not imported
automatically to new wikis, but can be taken from
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_articles_all_languages_should_have
and translated.

Angela.


from_name: Jens Ropers

body:
> Message: 9
> Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 14:41:50 -0400
> From: "Anthony DiPierro" <anthonydipierro at hotmail.com>
>
> <snip>
>
> Says something about how well we explain our requirements as well.  Or
> in
> this case, how well we agree on our requirements.  Most of the articles
> listed *did* meet our requirements.  VfD is broken.  It probably never
> worked in the first place.
>
> Anthony

Apologies in advance should this be construed as rude, but...

,,,honestly, Anthony, I'm getting the impression that you are
repeatedly finding
''all'' sorts of things about the Wikipedia that:
(1) Don't Work At All ™
and are
(2) Broken By Design ®
and need ''''radical''' fixing as well as a wide ranging discussion of
basic principles.

Would that be wide of the mark?

- Jens

Thanks and regards,
Jens Ropers

There are two types of IT techs: The ones who watch soap operas and the
ones who watch progress bars.
http://www.ropersonline.com/elmo/#108681741955837683


body:
> Message: 8
> Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 11:25:05 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com>
>
> Unfortunately, even though the class assignment required that the
> articles created by the students meet Wikipedia requirements, now that
> most of them have been listed on VfD, the instructor is trying to
> claim that they do meet our requirements.  It seems if the vast
> majority of the articles have made it to VfD, then not only has the
> majority of the class failed the assignment, but the instructor
> doesn't understand the nature of Wikipedia.  If the majority of a
> class fails an assignment, that has to say something about the
> instructor, as well.
>
> RickK

I think [[Hanlon's razor]] applies.

The instructor has really gotten his knickers in a twist with this:

He's obviously got an IT background (at least to some extent) or he
would hardly be an instructor at all (maybe I'm too optimistic ;-).
However, as we all like to forget, IT has ''somewhat'' diversified in
the last two decades or so and somebody might be an old pro who knows
his x86 assembly language by heart but has somehow, say, never touched
Usenet. Or (more recent example) doesn't know what a blog is. I request
that for virtually everybody of us, there's some "essential" part of
the entire IT experience that has passed us by. Now maybe User:Pcw was
just a bit unfamiliar with the entire copyleft, open-source-philosophy,
Bazaar-and-Cathedral, Free Documentation and community collaboration
thing.

The next problem would be hubris.
Most of us have on some occasion fallen into the trap of assuming that
me had "instantly grasped it" when there was a lot more to "it"
(whatever the particular subject be).

This might have led to a situation where User:Pcw might have skimped on
the lurking, waiting and observing part and where he's been a bit too
swift to officially present the Wikipedia to his students, who duly
took it "straight from the horse's mouth".

Seeing that he's failed to grasp a few very relevant nuances about the
critical collaboration process (which I for one am only just now
learning by trial and error), he's gotten himself into this Catch-22
situation:

- He probably finds it difficult to admit to his students "Sorry guys.
My Bad. Missed a few bits there, threw you all into the fray and most
of you found your good efforts (which you've all worked for) wasted and
rejected. It was a shite assignment. Let's move on." -- I mean, my
understanding is that they are just starting this course w/ him. Three
words: Loss of credibility.

- On the other hand, he can't ignore the fact that all or most of the
articles WERE really rejected (for IMHO mostly valid reasons).

So what he's doing now is holding that "we" (i.e. all those Wikipedians
who somehow opposed the said articles) got it all wrong. So "he's right
and the others are all wrong".  (I was only a lurking passive reader on
this one btw.) It's a very human reaction to a very unfortunate
situation that he's gotten himself into for very human reasons.

At least that's my interpretation of the entire affair.

- Jens

PS:
==Can WE learn from this?==
It's in our interest to gather more potential future contributors and
initiatives like this would have been an excellent opportunity to
"recruit".
Maybe we should think about how we can more prominently feature
[[Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects]] -- Suggestion: Main Page
link "Educators - click here".
And then we should figure out what info we can write into
[[Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects]] to avoid such fiascos in
the future?
Sounds good?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Dartmouth follies

body:
On 25 Aug 2004, at 02:50, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:

>  The instructor
> commented that he didn't know how you could give an objective grade to
> "improving an article."

He doesn't know the history tool then.
What's wrong with using something like this:

	http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?
title=Gray%27s_Anatomy&diff=5327961&oldid=5248468

That's making it pretty obvious what to grade, IMHO.

Yes, admittedly, if there are many edits by other's in between, then it
might become difficult. -- But how about this:
Instruct students to stick the {{inuse}} tagon the article they've
chosen to improve (see [[Template:Inuse]]).
IMPORTANT: Also instruct them not to leave that on there longer than a
day!

(Other then that, they could use the preview function and commit all in
one go. Might be difficult though if they are using a certain thing
called "MSIE", where with certain versions, if you press ESC within a
text box it blanks the entire thing irrevocably). It might be better to
have them use an external editor then, but that doesn't protect them
from edit conflicts.
So clearly the previous option is MUCH better.)

- Jens [[User:Ropers]]


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> The overlap between this proposed project and Wikipedia is simply
> too great and will thus harm our coverage of taxa and species by
> dividing that aspect between two different projects.

Much like IMDb threatens Wikipedia's coverage of movies and actors.
They should close down immediately.  Why don't they.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Dartmouth follies

body:
Absolutely SHAMELESS!

> From: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 17:34:39 -0700
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Dartmouth follies
>
> As for me, I love Dartmouth.  I visited there this summer when I was
> on vacation in New Hampshire, and loved it.  I would really love to
> have an opportunity to speak there, or even better, to visit longer
> term under some sort of "visiting scholar" arrangement.


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
As someone who has used WP in teaching before, I must say the wording
of the assignment is quite terse, and likely inadequate. It's not
clear what the goal is - article writing, learning markup, interaction
with Wikipedians, learning NPOV, etc. An assignment which is too open
ended or too loosely defined results in exactly what we see - a
selection of articles (sadly) consistent with stereotypes of Dartmouth
such as beer pong, ski team, fraternities. No wonder folks early on
felt it was troll bait. :)

In the future, a better option would be to put up constraints or
"bumper guards", such as pointing to existing WP lists as a starting
point. Suggestions include:

[[Wikipedia:Most wanted stubs]]
[[Wikipedia:Most_wanted_articles]]
[[Special:Shortpages]]

Or, tell students to link in at least "N" number of articles in:
[[Wikipedia:Orphaned_Articles]]

I've started a new section with these in
[[Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects#Considerations_and_suggestions]]

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
University of Hong Kong

On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 22:44:59 +0000, Duncan Harris
<dunc_harris at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I've gone through most of these article, cross referencing all those on vfd.
>   Some are pretty good, only needing minor sweeps, but for every good
> article, there's atleast one bad one.  The pcw has a responsibility to
> provide us with a list of articles worked on.  He can accept what twaddle he
> likes for his assignment, but yes this does reflect badly on him and the
> university (especially with one idiot trying to defend the reserve football
> team by impersonating RickK).  I think people sweeping this rubbish should
> give themselves a round of applaus. pcw should be warned not to attempt this
> again in a similar form unless he changes the wording of his assignment, as
> it may constitute organised vandalism.
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE*
> http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rebranding VfD

body:
Now, normally I'm an engineer-type who sneers at marketing and "image" and
branding, and believes that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
But I do have to wonder whether a VfD by some other name might have less
sting.

In practice as I know it today, Wikipedia is not quite as radical a departure
from traditional publishing practice was outsiders sometimes think. In
particular, there is still a process by which articles are "accepted" or
"rejected." The big difference is that everything takes place in the open and
happens in the order ready-fire-aim.

Normally an article would go first to a closed group of editors who would
accept or reject it, and nobody sees it until it gets accepted.

In Wikipedia, an article gets published first. In almost every case, an
article gets glanced at very promptly within a very short period of time
after it appears. Contributors don't realize it, but if it survives twenty-
four hours without a notice having been placed on it, it has already been
"accepted."

Borderline articles get subjected to a process. The process is called "Votes
for Deletion." To someone unfamiliar with Wikiprocess, this sounds like
"someone want to delete my article" or "someone is trying to delete my
article" or "someone hates me" or "someone hates Dartmouth."

Normally, the nomination language reinforces this question, because, unlike
the sometimes-phony practice of softening a statement by phrasing it as a
question,
phrasing it as a question, VfD nominators traditionally harden a question by
phrasing it as a statement. E.g. (GROSSLY caricaturing an actual VfD debate
for purposes of illustration) instead of saying "I've never heard of Lehman
Brothers, what do you know about them?" a nominator is more likely to say
something like "Vanity, some non-notable insurance company, delete spam."
Typically there will be a more comments like that until someone with _some_
topic familiarity runs across the VfD entry. THEN someone chimes in "The firm
is really quite large, unless I'm very much mistaken." Then there are follow-
ups "It's a Fortune 500 company," "Definite keep," "Keep article on major
financial force of the twentieth century," "Need more articles like this,"
etc.

A newbie who joins the discussion at an early stage does not understand that
his article is not in imminent threat, that there will be a full week for
people who have knowledge of the topic to notice and join in, that the curt
dismissiveness tone is shorthand, etc.

To Wikipedians, "Votes for Deletion" means "even though several hundred
people can delete articles, we take deletion so seriously that we hash over
everything for a week."

It really does seem to me that there might be ways to make the process more
intelligible to newcomers. I honestly believe that the current process
_induces_ bad behavior from new contributors who might not naturally show it.

I'm thinking something like this:

a) Change the name of Votes for Deletion to something like Editorial Review.

b) Every article when submitted automatically gets a tag at the top, saying
something like "New article, not yet reviewed."

c) Like any other edit, anybody can remove this tag, but, by custom, it is
removed by someone knowledgeable who has made a judgement that it does not
need to go to Editorial Review.

d) If the article looks like VfD-worthy material, the tag gets replaced with
a tag saying, you know, "This page has been listed on Wikipedia:Editorial
Review and may not be accepted. Please see its entry on that page for
justifications and discussion. If you want the page accepted, please read the
acceptance guidelines and vote for its acceptance there. Please do not remove
this notice or blank this page while the question is being considered.
However, you are welcome to make improvements to it."

Yeah, I know, flipping it around from "deletion" to "acceptance" makes me
gag, too.

There is a disconnect. Many newcomers do not and never will read all the
scattered policy documents (and it is in the Wikinature that they always will
be scattered and not perfectly clear or consistent). Many newcomers have the
misperception that everything is allowed in Wikipedia unless it's outright
false. Warnings about "ruthless editing" don't really convey the way it
works.

Everybody understands the concept of submitting an article for review and
possibly having it be rejected.  If newcomers perceive Wikiprocess as a
variation of that model, fewer of them will be unnecessarily shocked or
offended by the VfD process.

Maybe.


from_name: Peter Jacobi

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Technical problems with images originating on Mac OS X
	on UTF-8 Wikipedia

body:
Dear All,

Since switching de.wikipedia to UTF-8 a problem with image uploads
 from Mac OS X surfaced. The Mac OS X filesystem, IMHO contrary to
most other ones, stores the filenames in decomposed Unicode.

As an example look at a file named "?" (small u-umlaut):

Normal use is the Unicode codepoint:
 U+00FC LATIN SMALL LETTER U WITH DIAERESIS

This is
 0xC3 0xBC in UTF-8
 "%C3%BC" as URL

Mac OS X use is this Unicode copdepoint sequence:
 U+0075 LATIN SMALL LETTER U
 U+0308 COMBINING DIAERESIS
 0x75 0xCC 0x88 in UTF-8
 "u%CC%88" as URL

Now uploading images from a Mac will give them the unusual
filenames, which cannot be spotted by sight in most cases.
Using the images will fail, if you simply type image name
as you see it. Copy'n'paste the "Mac" umlaut filename will
work but will make everything even less transparent.

Example image:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:To%CC%88o%CC%88a%CC%88a%CC%88st.jpg

German discussion Page:
de:Wikipedia_Diskussion:UTF8-Probleme#Umlaute_in_Upload_Dateinamen_bei_Mac_OS_X

The most foolproof solutions seems to me, to normalize incoming
filenames to NFC (composed) form by the server software.

Regards,
Peter Jacobi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Pcw and USENET

body:
> From: Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Dartmouth class project now on VFD
> The instructor has really gotten his knickers in a twist with this:
>
> He's obviously got an IT background (at least to some extent) or he
> would hardly be an instructor at all (maybe I'm too optimistic ;-).
> However, as we all like to forget, IT has ''somewhat'' diversified in
> the last two decades or so and somebody might be an old pro who knows
> his x86 assembly language by heart but has somehow, say, never touched
> Usenet.

I recognized his name from his postings in comp.risks. And, yes, it's the
same guy: I asked him.

Try a Google Groups advanced search on exact phrase pcw at flyzone.com . And
that's just ONE of his RECENT email addresses. (Then try one on "Peter
Wayner". My only concern is the possibility that there's more than one Peter
Wayner, as he seems to be fairly prolific.)

Since emails from him give pcw at flyzone.com as the return address...

...and since pcw at flyzone.com seems to be the author of "Translucent
Databases" (see ttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0967584418/002
-3782040-1645636?v=glance&vi=reviews), why, he must also be the author of all
those books at http://www.wayner.org/books/ ...

...which means he's the author of "Free for All: How Linux and the Free
Software Movement Undercut the High-tech Titans."

Which means there's at least a chance that he's read "The Cathedral and the
Bazaar."

I'm trying to get up the nerve to ask him outright whether _he's_ notable.


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] What is the purpose of this mailing list ??

body:
Marco Krohn wrote:
> The proposed project "wikispecies" will have a huge overlap with existing
> Wikipedia articles. Therefore using the term sister-project is IMHO wrong,
> and calling it a "partial fork" is much closer to reality.

Just to clarify, I think that wikispecies is not overlapping with the
encyclopedia in any significant way, that it is not a fork, that it is
a perfectly appropriate use of our resources, and that this discussion
should end pretty soon.

A species database is just a different kind of reference work than a
general interest encyclopedia.  This is not materially different from
efforts at wikibooks, wiktionary, etc., to generate other kinds of
reference works.

By supporting Benedikt Mandl's proposal in-house, rather than being
persnickity and forcing him to go outside for support, we guarantee
such things as long-term software and content compatibility, etc.

When fully developed, a wikispecies directory will be a delightful
resource work as a standalone *and* a nice foundation for *some*
encyclopedia articles.  But the two are not identical.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] image bug

body:
On Tue, Aug 24, 2004 at 05:20:30PM -0700, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> >Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >
> >>Could somebody please look at the situation of images on Wikisource.
> >>All of them give 404 errors,  and "What links here" invariably shows
> >>that nothing links to them.

Fixed.

Regards,

JeLuF


subject: [WikiEN-l] Dartmouth follies

body:
Yes, but I meant every word of it.  :-)

Fred Bauder wrote:

> Absolutely SHAMELESS!
>
> > From: "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com>
> > Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 17:34:39 -0700
> > To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> > Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Dartmouth follies
> >
> > As for me, I love Dartmouth.  I visited there this summer when I was
> > on vacation in New Hampshire, and loved it.  I would really love to
> > have an opportunity to speak there, or even better, to visit longer
> > term under some sort of "visiting scholar" arrangement.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
--- Gerard Meijssen <gerardm at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Therefore I fail to see why the ToL, which is an en: resource, would
> serve as reason _not_ to start WikiSpecies. When people think that it
> takes away from the ToL, they fail to consider that the effort that goes
> into WikiSpecies may not be effort that does not go into en: but that it
> may take effort away from nl: or de: or fr:

Many different Wikipedia language versions have their own ToL WikiProject. What
we need is something that has all the supposed benefits of Wikispecies but none
of the disadvantages. The most recent discussion has been moving in this
direction.

> Conclusion:
> *The arguments against are en: based have little or no relevance to
> other wikipedia and are, because of its purpose, of litle relevance to
> this list.

Wrong. See above.

> *WikiSpecies will be a sister-project and as such it is not for this
> mailing list to decide what is going to happen.

It is a fork of a very large part of Wikipedia, so it is *most* relevant.

> *The danger of forking outside Wikimedia is real, this to happen is the
> worst case scenario, because it will mean that a potentially valuable
> resource will be lost to all wikipedia not just to en:.

Wrong again. We want to improve Wikipedia so that it has many of the functions
that a separate project would have without forking our own content. What others
do is beyond our control but what *we* do is not.

-- Daniel

_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/goldrush


body:
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> Marco Krohn wrote:
> > The proposed project "wikispecies" will have a huge overlap with existing
> > Wikipedia articles. Therefore using the term sister-project is IMHO wrong,
> > and calling it a "partial fork" is much closer to reality.
>
> Just to clarify, I think that wikispecies is not overlapping with the
> encyclopedia in any significant way, that it is not a fork, that it is
> a perfectly appropriate use of our resources, and that this discussion
> should end pretty soon.

How the hell is it not a fork?! Have you been reading this discussion? Esp
important has been talk about how to incorporate the database functions into
MediaWiki so that everything Wikispecies-type functions could be performed. Use
of the upcoming Wikimedia Commons to store such data was also a great idea.

> A species database is just a different kind of reference work than a
> general interest encyclopedia.  This is not materially different from
> efforts at wikibooks, wiktionary, etc., to generate other kinds of
> reference works.

None of the data proposed to go into this fork could not be incorporated into
existing Wikimedia projects.

> By supporting Benedikt Mandl's proposal in-house, rather than being
> persnickity and forcing him to go outside for support, we guarantee
> such things as long-term software and content compatibility, etc.

If in-house means within existing projects, then yes I agree.

> When fully developed, a wikispecies directory will be a delightful
> resource work as a standalone *and* a nice foundation for *some*
> encyclopedia articles.  But the two are not identical.

Our current category system could be extended to create such a directory
*within* Wikipedia. Dividing our biology contributor base between two separate
projects that have a great deal of overlap is a HUGE mistake.

-- Daniel

_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/goldrush


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

body:
--- Benedikt Mandl <benedikt.mandl at gmx.at> wrote:
> 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?

You must first demonstrate that such functionality could not be added to
Wikipedia (which is *NOT* a general encyclopedia but a collection of many
specialized ones). Several people have already proposed ways to do *exactly*
that.

-- Daniel

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


body:
--- Marco Krohn <marco.krohn at web.de> wrote:

> On Wednesday 25 August 2004 11:05, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
> > *WikiSpecies will be a sister-project and as such it is not for this
> > mailing list to decide what is going to happen.
>
> up to now a Wikipedia sister-project meant that its content is (mostly)
> disjoint with the content of any other Wikipedia project. That means that an
> article is either in A  or in B (or = exclusive or).
>
> The proposed project "wikispecies" will have a huge overlap with existing
> Wikipedia articles. Therefore using the term sister-project is IMHO wrong,
> and calling it a "partial fork" is much closer to reality.

Exactly. What we need to do is add database functionality to our current
projects. This is already badly needed.

-- mav

_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/goldrush


body:
--- Gerard Meijssen <gja.meijssen at chello.nl> wrote:
> Which wikipedia articles are you talking about? en:articles de:articles
> ? Should nl: articles not be written because they have an overlap with
> de: or en:? WikiSpecies will if anything provide a resource for all
> wikipedia.

Ergo the proposal to put taxoboxes and other shared data on Wikimedia Commons.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - Send 10MB messages!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Developers needed!

body:
--- Pete/Pcb21 <pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com> wrote:
> 6) There should be a defined mechanism for importing wikispecies
> information into wikipedia. I envisage the current ToL taxoboxes being
> currently replaced with information imported from wikispecies using some
> sort of filter. Alongside this import would sit a more waffly
> description of the species and less scientific-relevant information. The
> import process should be automated as possible, and preferably entirely
> automatic and in real-time (though this would require an extension to
> the MW software). This import should be designed to work with
> non-English Wikipedias as far as is possible. It would not be acceptable
> to just have links to Wikispecies. It must be more integrated to avoid
> duplication of effort.

This is a wrong-headed approach since many different things will require
database functionality. Just have the common data on Wikimedia Commons and call
upon it from within one of the other Wikimedia projects. Element data, as I
already noted, would also be very important to host in that way.

-- mav

_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/goldrush


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Developers needed!

body:
--- "James R. Johnson" <modean52 at comcast.net> wrote:

> 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.

That is what the Wikimedia Commons is for.

-- mav

_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/goldrush


subject: Tree of Life [was: RE: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Developers needed!]

body:
--- "James R. Johnson" <modean52 at comcast.net> wrote:

> I went to the Tree of Life page - thanks for the link, btw.  I thought it
> was a Wiki project, and thus housed on a wiki-site (wikitol.com or something
> like that).  It's nice, but a wikispecies would, I think, be easier to
> navigate.  That's simply how I've seen the wikis to be.

That is what categories are for. When all species/taxon articles have then,
then navigation will be easy. What we do need is the ability to search within
categories and select articles based on categories.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


body:
--- Benedikt Mandl <benedikt.mandl at gmx.at> wrote:

> Dividing our biology contributor base between two separate projects that
> have a great deal of overlap is a HUGE mistake. >
> > -- Daniel
> >
> I think you made your point very clear in several e-mails and there are
> other people who support your point of view - but on the other hand I
> think it has become obvious that a big number of people supports the
> wikiSpecies. Your arguments didn't convince them and repeating them again
> and again won't change that.

Neither will repeating of your same arguments. It is you who want to do
something new, so the onus of proof is on you, not me.

> WikiSpecies will evolve. I understand your worries and will respect them,
> please respect other people's ambitions to create wikiSpecies.

Please respect what work has already been done and improve that instead of
forking off functionality that could be used to improve what we already have.

-- mav

_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/goldrush


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: What is the purpose of this mailing list ??

body:
Pete/Pcb21 wrote:
> >Just to clarify, I think that wikispecies is not overlapping with the
> >encyclopedia in any significant way,
>
> Looking through all the messages in this thread, I think you are very
> much in the minority by saying that.
>
> Other posters seem to have suggested that
> a) there would be overlap, and it would be a good thing or
> b) there would be overlap, and it would be a bad thing.
>
> What makes you think there would not be an overlap?

Well, I should clarify what I meant by "any significant way".
Obviously, there will be overlap in a sense, since articles about
species are perfectly valid.

But the point I meant is that the overlap is not significant because
it is the same _sort_ of overlap (or non-overlap) as we have between
wikipedia and wiktionary.

Compare:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Economics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics

These two are markedly different, as well they should be, because an
encyclopedia is not a dictionary.

An encyclopedia is also not a species directory.

Consider:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger

This is a perfectly normal and typical species article.  It's pretty
good if you ask me.

But notice that it links to [[Siegfried & Roy]], and discussed Rudyard
Kipling and William Blake's perspective on the tiger.  Calvin and
Hobbes is discussed, as is Tigger, Winne-the-Pooh's friend.

These things are all perfectly appropriate for a tiger article _in a
general purpose encyclopedia_.  They do not belong in a species
directory.

To further illustrate the difference, compare:
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.cfm?genusname=Carcharodon&speciesname=carcharias
with
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_White_Shark

Notice that our article (quite properly) discusses the movie Jaws, and
links to Steven Spielberg.  Fishbase does not, and again, quite
properly.

I see a species directory as a significantly different *kind* of
resource than a general encyclopedia.  They can be mutually
reinforcing and supporting, as with wikitnary and wikipedia.
But they are not the same thing.

--Jimbo

>
> >that it is not a fork, that it is
> >a perfectly appropriate use of our resources, and that this discussion
> >should end pretty soon.
>
> Much of "this discussion" has been about how the two projects could
> scratch each other's backs in the best way. Clearly that needs to be
> ongoing.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rebranding VfD

body:
a) Change the name of Votes for Deletion to something like Editorial Review.

I like this a lot, as I like the entire process suggested by Dpsmith a lot. It is a step toward greter quality control without being a radical departure from our Wiki norms. I heartily second the entire proposal.

Danny


body:
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>...
> To further illustrate the difference, compare:
>
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.cfm?genusname=Carcharodon&speciesname=carcharias
> with
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_White_Shark
>
> Notice that our article (quite properly) discusses the movie Jaws, and
> links to Steven Spielberg.  Fishbase does not, and again, quite
> properly.
>
> I see a species directory as a significantly different *kind* of
> resource than a general encyclopedia.  They can be mutually
> reinforcing and supporting, as with wikitnary and wikipedia.
> But they are not the same thing.

Jimbo - *all* the info at
http://www.fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesSummary.cfm?genusname=Carcharodon&speciesname=carcharias
should be in our corresponding Wikipedia article (along with the other stuff
you mention). *Why* in the world would we want to
1) Not have that info in Wikipedia but have it it a separate project
2) Have it in both places and thus have to maintain it in both places

The "general purpose" aspect of Wikipedia in reality means that we have a great
deal of info on various different aspects of a single topic. 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).

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.

-- mav

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Taxoboxes.

body:
--- Gerard Meijssen <gerardm at myrealbox.com> wrote:

> Copying a taxobox from en: to nl: takes a lot of time. It would be best
> to have one taxobox that serves us all.
>
> What is needed to create a truly standard Taxobox?
>
> The Taxobox has to be language independent.
> The Taxobox has to be acceptable to multiple wikipedia
> The diverse wikipedia have to be willing to work together to create this
> standard Taxobox.

Very good point. Use of templates for the standard headings helps. Hosting
taxoboxes on Wikimedia Commons and calling upon them from within Wikipedia
would help even more. Then there will only be one copy to maintain.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Developers needed!

body:
--- Pete/Pcb21 <pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com> wrote:

> Daniel Mayer wrote:
>
> > This is a wrong-headed approach...
>
> Fair enough. I don't really care how its implemented. I just care that
> there is an easy way to avoid duplication of effort.

Me too! That is why I like the idea of using Wikimedia Commons.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


body:
--- "James R. Johnson" <modean52 at comcast.net> wrote:

>  I wouldn't mind having the current wiki catergory system expanded to
> include (for biology) the various taxonomic categories of a life-form
> (Kingdom, Phylum, Sub-phylum....Genus, Species).  That would (I think) allow
> someone to search for a creature or article based on its scientific name.  I
> don't, however see it as dividing the biology base, but rather, allowing
> them to create a basic directory, which the wikipedia expounds upon, with
> links from the wikispecies article on, say, felis domesticus [having basic
> scientific information], linking to the wikipedia article for more prosaic
> style, distribution around the world, role in mythology, cat-worship in
> ancient Egypt, etc.

The "science stuff" needs to be part of the Wikipedia article as well. This
makes Wikispecies redundant.

-- Daniel

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - 50x more storage than other providers!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikispecies

body:
Alternate solution, which would require much less special cases:
* introduce "<optional type=wikispecies>lots'o'data</optional>" tag,
which will
** show the data for everyone who has marked himself as a member of
wikispecies project in user settings
** show a link "More detail information" for everyone else; that link
will then display the full thing
* introduce "<categorytree>" tag, which will show a category tree for
the current article
** attribute "super=1" to show the category below, "super=all" to show
everything down to the root
** attribute "sub=1" to show the next subcategory, "sub=all" to show
them all

This is
* relatively easy to hack (hide "optional" section unless this-and-that
condition)
* usable for many sub-projects like histroy etc.
* allows everyone to get all the data without "average" users being
squashed by it
* fully transparent for searching (search will find keywords in the
"optional" secation as well)

If required, we can parse-out the "optional" part for editing. But
that's optional ;-)

Magnus

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>This sounds interesting...
>
>--- Till Westermayer <till at tillwe.de> wrote:
>
>
>>How to implement this technically speaking, I don't know, but how about
>>this:
>>
>>- The Wikispecies interface only shows article tagged with
>>Category:Wikispecies (or whatever is the best category).
>>
>>- This project uses a specific parser, allowing for the implementation
>>of tree navigation and a more "scientifically" looking output of data
>>(that can be found in the taxabox).
>>
>>- Maybe other data is in the articles used as source for Wikispecies and
>>hidden somehow (via a special comment mode or some other specialized tag
>>in the article, or even as additional stored data in a separate db,
>>accessed via the article name = scientific species name as key)
>>
>>- "Edit this entry" in the Wikispecies interface would bring up a window
>>consisting of:
>>
>>        - the wikipedia edit window showing the source text
>>        - additional data input fields
>>
>>- A user in the wikipedia proper will only see the wikipedia article,
>>but not the additional data. The only thing other for them is the
>>"Category:Wikispecies" tag (which would explain, when opened as article,
>>what Wikispecies project is and how to access it in the "scientific"
>>interface).
>>
>> __ .
>> / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
>>. .
>>  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
>>  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
>>  . . . . .
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>_______________________________
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.
>http://promotions.yahoo.com/goldrush
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>