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

[Stephen Thorpe]

yeah, but you wouldn't really cite a Wikispecies page for a taxonomic hierarchy/ranking ... the primary purpose should be to get up-to-date info (including nomenclatural details)?and references (with links)?on a particular taxon
?
for example, it would have been better if Krikken and Huijbregts (2011) had?consulted Wikispecies before publishing: http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Onthophagus_danumensis_Krikken_%26_Huijbregts
?
S


________________________________
From: Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com>
To: Stephen Thorpe <stephen_thorpe at yahoo.co.nz> 
Cc: Doug Yanega <dyanega at ucr.edu>; "TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU" <TAXACOM at MAILMAN.NHM.KU.EDU> 
Sent: Thursday, 15 December 2011 12:07 PM
Subject: Re: [Taxacom] Wikispecies as an open alternative to Catalogue of Life

Stephen,


On 12/14/2011 5:56 PM, Stephen Thorpe wrote:
> I reiterate that full edit histories are preserved for Wikimedia
> articles, and these can be linked to by way of stable URLs. Vandalism
> can only "put a new sheet of paper on the pile", it cannot alter the
> history. Hence, if you were to cite a Wikimedia article in a serious
> scientific context, you would site the current version not qua
> current version, but via the stable URL to that version of the
> article in the article history. This link would then be unaffected by
> any subsequent edits, by vandals or anyone else.

This is dubious. Yes, the edit history of the taxon itself is stored in the edit history of the taxon, but the information of the transcluded templates, which are used to code the higher ranks, are stored in as many pages as there are ranks. Hence, for scientific publication, you need to cite ALL ranks to preserve the whole ranking of a single taxon. ~~~

Kim
P.S., the ~~~~ is an wikimedia insider joke)