Talk:Wikispecies

How about moving the Dichotomous Key from Wikibooks to Wikispecies. It seems an appropriate resource to incorporate and increased prominence would encourage more people to fill it out. The ultimate (ambitious!) goal of a single, unified dichotomous key capable of identifying virtually every documented species would be a wonderful thing to give to the world. I think it's worth at least bringing it across to the new project as a way of helping to get it up and running. — Trilobite 19:49, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Isn't Wikispecies supposed to have language-independant material in it, so it can be shared across wikis? wikibooks:Dichotomous Key is in English. Bryan Derksen 23:37, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Yes, but the resource's intended public are the scientists, their standard language is English and Latin for taxonomy. Having articles like this make sense from that perspective. Then again, when someone wants to translate it to another language, that is fine too.

As a result of the problems with traditional and simplified Chinese, work will be done to create a user interface that can be set from the preferences. This may find its way into Commons ans WikiSpecies. GerardM 04:28, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I am a great supporter of the internationalisation of Wikipedia and its associated projects and I think it's currently far too Anglo-centric, so I would be greatly in favour of translating into as many languages as possible. I have to say that if Wikispecies was intended to be language-independent I don't quite see how this could be achieved. How could Wikispecies not be in a particular language? The solution has to be translating as much as possible of the material that ends up there; I don't see any way of making it truly language-independent. — Trilobite 08:04, 16 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I imagine it'd be done by setting some sort of preference that automatically results in the field names being translated to one's language of choice - labels such as "species" and "genus" can be mechanically translated without much trouble. On the other hand, that Dichotomous Key has descriptive sentences in plain English. I don't see how that could be automatically translated without Babelfish-style problems, it'd have to be done manually - at which point one loses the whole portability point. Bryan Derksen 06:48, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The purpose of wikispecies

Wikispecies is created with a specific purpose in mind. It is to be a scientific resource for Biologists. The language regarding Taxonomy IS English and Latin. So to me this means that it may serve data to all wiktionaries BUT description would be in English. GerardM 08:35, 17 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Some concerns

After reading about Wikispecies, I must admit that I am very interested. However, there are several questions that I believe need addressing. 1. The idea of using the Dichotomous Key seems to be a good idea, but it would still have to be interfaced with some kind of actual presentation of individual species. It would be a useful tool, but not, I believe, the actual purpose of creating a taxonomical database covering all the species of the world. 2. How much detail would Wikispecies go into? I am assuming that each individual species would have a page, with the basics - Kingdom, Family, Order... all that - but would each species also have information about it? Pictures? If so, how much, and where is the line drawn? Would it be comparable to Wikipedia articles that exist on individual animals, or would these perhaps be ported to avoid duplication? This is where language independency comes in. Information may be necessary to avoid having a species entered many times.

I would suggest that the system is built to have fairly pervalent standards, i.e. fill-in-the-blanks for basic information to get a uniform presentation of information. All in all, however, I am looking forward to contributing. Jakob 21:26, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

removed from the category

Does Wikispecies discuss or have previous intellegence pro or con,regarding Genetic Modification of Seed or plant species? --65.73.65.191 16:34, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Update..

The text of this is kind of outdated. Still claims Wikispecies is in the development stages. Esteffect 23:26, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Wikispecies doesnt work OK

This text is in wikispecies.org:

Diese Domain wurde gesperrt...

Falls Sie der Administrator dieser Domain sind und Fragen zur Sperrung Ihrer Domain haben, wenden Sie sich bitte an unser Support-Team.

Albertsab 06:28, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

• Wikispecies is at species.wikimedia.org. A bug has been filed (mediazilla:7495) to get wikispecies.org to point to species.wikimedia.org --Georgeryp 14:53, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Microformat proposal for marking up taxonomic names

I am in the process of specifying a formula (a microformat) for marking-up, in HTML, the names of species (and sub-species, varieties, hybrids, etc.), so that such names can be recognised by software and searched, indexed, extracted or aggregated.

The microformat will be an open standard, freely available for anyone to use. It's relevant here, because WikiSpecies is one of the inspirations for it - almost every page on the site could use it.

For instance, if I mark up a list of birds using that microformat, you might have browser tool which lists all the species on the page, and creates links to, say their entries in Wikipedia, or the BTO website, or some academic database of your choosing.

Early thoughts are on an editable wiki and need both messages of support (not just "me too"s, but particularly from people who have websites on which they might use them) and, especially, comments and constructive criticisms.

If you know a webmaster who might be interested, or a taxonomist who might be able to contribute to the debate (are there any "edge cases" not covered by the proposal as it currently stands, for instance?), please pass this message on to them. And please feel free to move this to a more appropriate talk page.

Also, please let me know if there are many mailing lists or web-fora where taxonomical matters are debated.

Thank you.

AndyMabbett 23:18, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

The draft 'species' microformat has been applied to Wikipedia-EN's "taxobox". Please see the taxobox talk page for details. AndyMabbett 21:48, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

If we are going to make a project for this purpose then we should propose more projects.--Arceus fan 22:06, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

Good Ideas, Aspects of this proposal have also been proposed at Species, but received no response nor guidance. An effective wiki search engine is desperately needed to permit synergy on these projects! Presently, there is not even a Species project overview/history nor any other orientation material on the species main page. Later, I will put a link there to here for at least a start.
(71.246.234.139 05:09, 23 December 2008 (UTC))

Why...

... Wikispecies is in English? It's uncomfortable for readers who don't know English. AtUkr (talk) 16:04, 1 December 2012 (UTC)

It's supposed to be multilingual. Which part is in English? πr² (t • c) 16:31, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikispecies and Wikidata

I think that all the data present in Wikispecies can and should be brought to Wikidata. Will Wikispecies be usefull after this process? Can Wikispecies be merged into Wikidata? Fale (talk) 16:25, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

d:Wikidata:Project_chat/Archive/2013/02#Include_Wikispecies_into_Wikidata. Agreed. πr² (t • c) 16:32, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the reference, I'll read the whole discussion there :) Fale (talk) 16:37, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

@PiRSquared17: Do you know of any follow-up discussion? 𝟙𝟤𝟯𝟺𝐪𝑤𝒆𝓇𝟷𝟮𝟥𝟜𝓺𝔴𝕖𝖗𝟰 (𝗍𝗮𝘭𝙠) 15:54, 25 September 2020 (UTC)

10th anniversary

Wikispecies celebrates its 10th anniversary in (5??) September 2014, which seems like a good reason to make a strategy plan for an increased marketing of the project. Any ideas and suggestions how to to this are welcome! Dan Koehl (talk) 04:20, 8 April 2014 (UTC)