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Earth's Species To Be Cataloged On the Web
Posted by
kdawson
on Tue May 08, 2007 11:49 PM
from the can-you-spell-noah's-ark dept.
from the can-you-spell-noah's-ark dept.
Matt clues us in to a project to compile everything known about all of Earth's 1.8 million known species and put it all on one Web site, open to the world. The effort is called the Encyclopedia of Life. It will include species descriptions, pictures, maps, videos, sound, sightings by amateurs, and links to entire genomes and scientific journal papers. The site was unveiled today in Washington where the massive effort was announced by some of the world's leading institutions. The project is expected to take about 10 years to complete; it starts out with committed funding for 1/4 of that."
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News: Encyclopedia of Life Launches First 30,000 Pages 87 comments
An anonymous reader writes to let us know that the Encyclopedia of Life opened up to the public today with its first 30,000 pages in place — and, according to the AP, promptly crumbled even before being Slashdotted. (The site seems fine now.) We discussed this project last year when it was announced. The Telegraph has an overview of the launch, and reports that only 25 "exemplar" pages on the site are fully fleshed out to the extent scientists hope eventually to attain for all species; the other few tens of thousands are expanded placeholders. The project hopes to begin taking input from citizen-scientists late this year.
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Isn't it already a part of Wikipedia? (Score:5, Informative)
in EOL, not just anybody can edit it (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
thanks for metamoderators... (Score:5, Insightful)
Do people really believe that "anybody can edit" and "accurate information suitable for reference" are one and the same?
Look at the question the grandparent asked -- it exposes a hidden assumption that liberal editing and accuracy are identical.
Citizendium still allows liberal editing, but on top of it they have a peer-review system in place to approve snapshots of articles. They aren't mutually exclusive. However, Wikipedia has a policy of not having any process to gain any modicum of authority.
Citizendium has its issues too, like that it hasn't fully articulated its desire to have authoritative processes in concrete terms that aren't couched in Larry Sanger's own degree-oriented biases, but at least it's trying.
My whole point was that the Encyclopedia of Life has a reason of existence outside of the no-holds-barred lack of authority that Wikipedia provides.
References and Echo Chambers are entirely two different things.
For making that distinction, I'm modded as a troll. Whatever.
Parent
Both have a reason to exist. (Score:5, Insightful)
- YES, you can find trolls, vandals, spammers and such
- Liberal editing gives better growing speed. Wikipedia has grown much more faster than any other work that requires reviewing.
- Liberal editing is much better for very small and rare subjects that *almost* nobody care about. In organised work, there aren't enough ressource to distribute to those subject and they are left un addressed. In liberal editing regimes, there always be an - albeit small - community of dedicated people who'll write on the rarest subjects. Granted : There is less guarantee about the accuracy without peer review, but at least it's a good starting point.
So there is a place for both EOL (for providing "official" reviewed information) and for WikiMedia's species (where you'll still find information about some obscure bug that almost nobody cares about - but all the 4 labs in the world that intensively study it have written an article about).
Just like there's a place for both traditionnal encyclopedia and wikipedia.
Parent
Re:Isn't it already a part of Wikipedia? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Isn't it already a part of Wikipedia? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
FAQ on Wikipedia (Score:4, Interesting)
From the article
I suppose anyone could try and duplicate any current effort, like a search engine, browser, video site, political site, movie site, music site, and then hope that with enough money and lawyers behind it to gain a large portion of the market.
Parent
Re:Isn't it already a part of Wikipedia? (Score:5, Informative)
It's interesting to read this FAQ [eol.org] from the Encyclopedia of Life:
They don't mention WikiSpecies directly, but would have to be aware of it with the Wikimedia Foundation on board. It will be interesting to see what license will the EoL be using and will it be WikiSpecies (GNUFDL) compatible? Hopefully the Wikimedia Foundation will give some good advice.
Given that a stated aim of the EoL is to get lots of people involved and be a cooperative effort, a copyleft license might promote cooperation. Perhaps it would be worth a few Slashdotters politely contacting the EoL [eol.org] and suggesting that copyleft would be a good thing for the EoL?
Parent
Check out the sample pages (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Isn't it already a part of Wikipedia? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
But hasn't The Guide already said it in two words? (Score:5, Funny)
To Serve Man (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:To Serve Man (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Internet pages (Score:5, Funny)
These Internet pages, are they something I'd need an Internet browser to enjoy?
What About... (Score:3, Informative)
Heh... (Score:4, Funny)
But... (Score:5, Funny)
Web 2.0 (Score:5, Funny)
Storytime (Score:5, Insightful)
A few years ago, when I was babysitting the neighbor's kid, I spotted an odd grashopper in the street. It was larger than any of the species I've seen up here before (Pacific Northwest), nearly four inches long, and mottled grey in a way that matched the asphalt pretty closely, with bright blue on its hind legs. It stayed very still for the most part, but occasionally walked a few inches before stopping again (I'm talking over a span of a few hours). Getting closer revealed that it looked like it was sucking on the road itself (or maybe some of the lichens within? I dunno). Now I spent much of my childhood chasing and catching grasshoppers in this same area, so this quite fascinated me and I wondered if there wasn't some urban offshoot of Orthoptera I hadn't previously known about. I let the bug be, but resolved to scour the web for information on it. Unfortunately, there was nothing to be found. No matching descriptions, and certainly no pictures. It didn't occur to me until much later that it may have been an as yet undocumented species.
This is all to say, it is about damn time we had something like the Encyclopedia of Life. Wikis are great to a certain point, but an organized project with funding, set on being as comprehensive as possible? Sign. me. up.
Re:Storytime (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
why so long? (Score:5, Funny)
Poor choice of acronym? (Score:5, Funny)
At last, a self-limiting database! (Score:5, Funny)
-- ydra
Plaease stop evolving now... (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:Plaease stop evolving now... (Score:4, Funny)
Special thanks to snpp [snpp.com].
Parent