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

[Doug Yanega]

There are a large number of "pro" arguments supporting the use of 
Wikispecies as a legitimate portal for biodiversity knowledge, not 
the least of which is that it has not only a robust infrastructure 
and flexible (and utilitarian) interface, but a funding source that 
is, presumably, not subject to politics or struggles for external 
support. It is basically a no-strings-attached gift to the scientific 
community, and we are free to make of it whatever we'd like. That so 
few scientists seem to exploit this seems more of an issue of 
perception than of reality; folks seem to believe that any work they 
contribute will inevitably be deleted or vandalized by incompetent 
nitwits, and this is simply untrue. The concept of a wiki is that if 
you are a contributor, you are ALSO a participant. That is, if you 
are serious about your contributions, then you remain involved 
*after* you have made your contribution, rather than just plopping 
something down, and then going away forever and hoping no one touches 
it. Wikis are self-policing, but they also have formal editorial 
policies in place, and mechanisms for ensuring that those policies 
are enforced. That includes policies to prevent incompetent nitwits 
from deleting or vandalizing legitimate contributions - but you may 
need to act as the enforcer yourself!
	If one can get past the perception of wikis as the 
playgrounds of vandals, and recognize them for the potentially 
valuable resources they are, there are only a few significant "con" 
arguments, and if there is to be a debate about the utility of wikis, 
it should focus on these *real* drawbacks, rather than imaginary ones.
	From my perspective, the major drawback of the 
Wikispecies/Wikipedia approach to classification is that it really 
does not accommodate for multiple competing classifications in the 
same interface. That is, you cannot present the same taxon as both a 
family (following authority A) and a subfamily (following authority 
B), etc. This has significant consequences, some good, and some bad. 
Since taxon pages are not indpendent of the ranks they are assigned, 
there can only be ONE overall classification framework, which would 
be ideal for the user community, but the taxonomic community is 
unlikely to be able to agree upon it (should all interested parties 
become involved). There is too little consensus and stability 
involving higher-level ranks for a single master classification - 
however *desirable* it may be to have one - to be unanimously 
accepted. It is one thing for an idiosyncratic taxonomist to publish 
idiosyncratic classifications and then pretend that their work is 
meeting with limited acceptance, but it is another if they are 
directly confronted by a mass of dissenters who refuse to acknowledge 
their work, and maintain the "official" classification according to 
consensus (where "limited acceptance" translates to nothing, since 
the hierarchy is all-or-nothing). It would make the disputes in the 
community less academic, and more personal, so such an approach is 
virtually guaranteed to cause greater friction and alienation - and, 
therefore, meet with resistance, especially from anyone whose 
concepts are not mainstream. At its best, this level of consensus can 
be viewed as a natural extension of peer review, and entirely 
positive and desirable, but at its worst, it can amount to 
censorship, which is not desirable. I can't see any easy way to set 
things up so the former is permitted but the latter is not, which 
therefore puts the entire enterprise at risk of losing support - 
thus, the "single classification" model has to be treated as a 
drawback so long as this issue of censorship is a legitimate concern.
	John Grehan's point regarding phylogenies is, in part, not 
directly applicable (since you can have ranks and nested groups 
without an explicit phylogeny), but certainly along similar lines. 
But just because you can't please everyone, does that mean we can't 
ever even attempt a consensus classification?

Sincerely,
-- 

Doug Yanega        Dept. of Entomology         Entomology Research Museum
Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314        skype: dyanega
phone: (951) 827-4315 (standard disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's)
              http://cache.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html
   "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness
         is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82