[Taxacom] Wikispecies as an open alternative to Catalogue of Life

[Dmitry Mozzherin]

I was playing last couple of days with conversion of Wikispecies data
into DarwinCore archive format. What did strike me that Wikispecies
format is almost formal enough to compile into a full-fledged
classification which could be widely used the same way as Catalogue of
Life does. It uses recursive templates as a basis for classification
information and if applied consistently it would be possible with a
little effort to assemble it to a hierarchy. Several people (most
vocal is probably Rod Page) expressed a desire to have such an open
system as an alternative to a more closed and guarded Catalogue of
Life. I see no technical problems for Wikispecies to become one. I is
possible to write scripts to atomize a subset of Wikispecies data and
organize it into a classification tree. Such a tree would have a
publicly editable hierarchy, references, synonyms, vernacular names.
The scripts could also serve as a quality control for the Wikispecies.
And eventually most of the pages in the system can become harvestable.

Would it be nice to make Wikispecies a basis for a community editable
wiki-based hierarchy of a global scope?

Dima