Mailing List Archive

On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Klaus Graf <klausgraf@googlemail.com>wrote:

> I cannot understand why WMF is unable to terminate Wikispecies which
> is a zero quality project. See
>
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Gnom/Wikispecies (also in English)
>
> Klaus Graf
>

Propose it be closed at Meta then.

--
Alex
(User:Majorly)
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Dear Klaus,

You refer to http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Gnom/Wikispecies, which
refers to Wikispecies:Village pump/Archive 24092005, a page which has been
deleted. The discussion on
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:L%C3%B6schkandidaten/11._September_2006#Wikispecies_.28gel.C3.B6scht.29refers
to a page on the german wiki, not to wikispecies. So I doubt you have
a point with 4 old references. From your references I also dont see a
permanent boycot of wikispecis by the german community, though

Personally i would not shed a tear when wikispecies is shredded, its
information is usually outdated - if present. And then I am not speaking
about the support of multiple taxonomies. Commons does (see for example
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cyclamen).
Imho wikispecies has a number of problems:
* It is text based, not db-structure based.
* Allthough often references are given at the bottom of a page, it is not
clear what is coming from what. See for example
http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Aspidytidae.
* Some species even have no reference at all, for example
http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ateles_paniscus
* Some referenced sources are not scientific publications.
* The target audience is not clear: scientific researcher? student?
interested laymen?
* Allthough I feel high respect for the people working at species,
information is soon outdated in this field. I feel sincere doubts about ever
being able to maintain a project like this by a limited number of volunteers
without substantial support from the scientific community.

For these reasons I would support a closure vote at meta.

kind regards,
teun spaans


On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 2:18 PM, Klaus Graf <klausgraf@googlemail.com>wrote:

> I cannot understand why WMF is unable to terminate Wikispecies which
> is a zero quality project. See
>
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Gnom/Wikispecies (also in English)
>
> Klaus Graf
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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> Wikispecies will have a niche if it can prove to be regularly on the
> leading edge.
>
> Has there been any discussions about putting newly described species
> onto the front page? If the information is made accessible, Wikinews
> editors could write up stories about new discoveries.

Too many new species are described (note: described =/= discovered) each week. We did have an idea of featuring 1 species per day/week but the idea got fizzled when the amount of workload is involved.

> What is the "2-year delay" ? I have looked at the AEMNP website, and
> all of their articles appear to be availabl on their website. What is
> their open access policy?
>
> https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Acta_Entomologica_Musei_Nationalis_Pragae

The home page (http://www.aemnp.eu/) only shows some highlighted papers in the latest article. For all papers, you will have to go to http://www.aemnp.eu/latest_issue.htm, but you will discover that the majority of the pdfs only provide an abstract. They will only release the full paper after that 2 year delay, but they kindly granted us access to the full versions of all online issues. For comparsion, those with the restrictions lifted will have a page that has links with the pdf logo (e.g. http://www.aemnp.eu/Volume45.htm) while those still under the delay shows the majority of papers having the textpad logo instead (e.g. http://www.aemnp.eu/Volume48_2.htm)

Andrew

"Fill the world with children who care and things start looking up."

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We always wanted to collaborate with scientific journals and projects, regardless of its size. But remember that we can't use EOL images unless they're from Flickr or Wikipedia, which means we probably have uploaded them to Commons already.

Perhaps we should give the Main Page a facelift, showing a featured species (with image) and a slideshow of images. Any more ideas?

Andrew

"Fill the world with children who care and things start looking up."




> Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:46:36 -0400
> From: meta.sj@gmail.com
> To: foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Wikispecies
>
> Andrew,
>
> This is a great response and anecdote.
>
> I have regularly run across people working on EOL, which has a broad
> staff one of whose tasks is to keep an eye on species-data resources
> around the web; and they are generally quite positive about
> wikispecies, and thinking about ways to better collaborate with the
> project.
>
> So there is certainly no consensus among the field experts that there
> is anything wrong with the project -- to the contrary, there is a
> certain sense that wikispecies may one day become a place to find the
> largest mutually collaborating community (in contrast to many other
> places that accept submissions of formally structured data but don't
> have much in the way of discussion or meta-analysis -- for instance on
> how to display disputed classificaitons; many sources simply make an
> executive choice and don't highlight the fact of the dispute at all).
>
> That said, it's true that many things could be done improve
> wikispecies -- for instance better translations of the main page and
> information about the site, and a move to its own domain name, for
> better stats tracking if nothing else.
>
> --SJ
>
> On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:52 PM, Andrew Leung<andrewcleung@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Full disclaimer: I contribute in Wikispecies.
> >>
> >> First, calling a project as "zero quality project", whether it belongs to WMF or Wikia or somewhere else, is downright assuming bad faith. Second, all of the discussion links in your "boycott" section took place in 2005 and 2006, clearly unable to recognize that consensus can change (and probably had changed since those are aged discussion). Third, we have accommodated multi-lingual requests by including vernacular names section. But you have to recognize the fact that the entire scientific community describing new species all communicate in English and use Linnaean taxonomy. Even if the paper is in foreign language, the abstract would at least have an English version. This norm has been set since 1735 (the year which Linnaeus first published Systema Naturae).
> >>
> >> We often get compared between Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), so I grabbed a correspondence with someone who shares data to both EOL and Wikispecies (permission already granted beforehand by these 2 individuals on quoting this email). The Zookeys, a peer-reviewed scientific journal on species, publisher Dr. Lyubomir Penev said this to a Wikispecies editor:
> >>
> >> "Today I was amazed to see that your latest edit of the Haplodesmidae page (with my Agathodesmus revision and Sergei Golovatch's Eutrichodesmus paper) was dated 19 June, *one day* after ZooKeys published it. You may even have beaten ZooBank, which links to ZooKeys."
> >>
> >> Furthermore, Dr. Penev said Encyclopedia of Life still hasn't got any details from ZooKeys, and the Catalogue of Life is years behind. Keep in mind that ZooKeys and EOL are partners, yet EOL has not used any data even from the first issue of ZooKeys, which is published in July 2008. Also, keep in mind that most images from EOL are licensed under CC-BY-NC-SA, which is unsuitable for reuse in Commons or WMF projects.
> >>
> >> Finally, to dismiss any claims that Wikispecies is a zero quality project, we have an agreed collaboration with ZooKeys, which will see hundreds of new species images continuously being uploaded to Commons. We are already planning another collaboration with Acta Entomologica Musei Nationalis Pragae which will grant us permission to upload their otherwise-copyrighted images to Commons under CC-BY-SA 3.0 to illustrate articles in WMF. We also granted special access to their pdf papers without a 2-year delay. Has any WMF projects successfully worked out collaborations to get large quantities of new species images in high quality and accuracy?
> >>
> >> Andrew
> >>
> >> "Fill the world with children who care and things start looking up."
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> On Wed, Aug 26, 2009 at 1:18 PM, Klaus Graf <klausgraf at googlemail.com>wrote:
> >>
> >> > I cannot understand why WMF is unable to terminate Wikispecies which
> >> > is a zero quality project. See
> >> >
> >> > http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Gnom/Wikispecies (also in English)
> >> >
> >> > Klaus Graf
> >> >
> >>
> >> Propose it be closed at Meta then.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Alex
> >> (User:Majorly)
> >>
> >>
> >> _________________________________________________________________
> >> Stay on top of things, check email from other accounts!
> >> http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9671355
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