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

[Stephen Thorpe]

Great idea, obviously! However, I suspect you will run into a "what's in it for me" brick wall ...
?
Stephen


________________________________
From: Dmitry Mozzherin <dmozzherin at eol.org>
To: TAXACOM <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu> 
Sent: Thursday, 15 December 2011 6:00 AM
Subject: [Taxacom] Wikispecies as an open alternative to Catalogue of Life

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

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