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Comments: 147 +-   Earth's Species To Be Cataloged On the Web on Tuesday May 08 2007, @10:49PM

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 08 2007, @10:49PM
from the can-you-spell-noah's-ark dept.
education
science
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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  • Isn't it already a part of Wikipedia? (Score:5, Informative)

    by yurik (160101) on Tuesday May 08 2007, @10:54PM (#19047815)
    Wikimedia Foundation already has a project called WikiSpecies -- http://species.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page [wikimedia.org] . Not sure how different that project will be.

    • in EOL, not just anybody can edit it (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sethawoolley (1005201) on Tuesday May 08 2007, @11:00PM (#19047863) Homepage
      Wikipedia is great and all, but its stated intent to not validate its data (unlike Citizendium, for example) means it has a limited usefulness.

      • thanks for metamoderators... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by sethawoolley (1005201) on Wednesday May 09 2007, @01:17AM (#19048607) Homepage
        And the grandparent wasn't a WikiTroll? I had mod-points but decided to post instead of moderate.

        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. /., echo away.

        • Both have a reason to exist. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by DrYak (748999) on Wednesday May 09 2007, @06:12AM (#19049843) Homepage
          If anything else, Wikipedia's way of doing things has also proved a couple of things :

          - YES, you can find trolls, vandals, spammers and such ...BUT...
          - 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.

    • Re:Isn't it already a part of Wikipedia? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Easy2RememberNick (179395) on Tuesday May 08 2007, @11:00PM (#19047867)
      ...and also this http://www.tolweb.org/tree/ [tolweb.org]

    • FAQ on Wikipedia (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Nymz (905908) on Tuesday May 08 2007, @11:13PM (#19047951) Journal
      From the EOL FAQ

      6. What about Wikipedia?
      Wikipedia inspired us. Wikipedia accumulated about 1.5 million entries in English in its first four years. That gave us confidence that our tasks are manageable with current technology and social behaviour, although the expert community in a lot of the subjects for pages in Encyclopedia of Life may be only a handful of people. Wikipedia has also created some species pages, as have other groups. Encyclopedia of Life will, we hope, unite all such efforts and increase their value. The Wikimedia Foundation is a member of the Encyclopedia's Institutional Council.

      From the article

      "I dream that in a few years wherever a reference to a species occurs on the Internet, there will be a hyperlink to its page in the Encyclopedia of Life," concluded Edwards.

      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.

    • Re:Isn't it already a part of Wikipedia? (Score:5, Informative)

      by femto (459605) on Tuesday May 08 2007, @11:36PM (#19048081) Homepage

      It's interesting to read this FAQ [eol.org] from the Encyclopedia of Life:

      6. What about Wikipedia?

      Wikipedia inspired us. Wikipedia accumulated about 1.5 million entries in English in its first four years. That gave us confidence that our tasks are manageable with current technology and social behaviour, although the expert community in a lot of the subjects for pages in Encyclopedia of Life may be only a handful of people. Wikipedia has also created some species pages, as have other groups. Encyclopedia of Life will, we hope, unite all such efforts and increase their value. The Wikimedia Foundation is a member of the Encyclopedia's Institutional Council.

      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?

    • Check out the sample pages (Score:5, Informative)

      by Bob54321 (911744) on Tuesday May 08 2007, @11:40PM (#19048109)
      I had a look at a couple of the page mock-ups on the site. The information seems organized in a much better way than on the Wiki-species page. If the actual site turns out to be as good as the examples I will use it frequently.
    • FYI, Wikimedia are one of the EOL partners [eol.org]

    • Re:Isn't it already a part of Wikipedia? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Tatarize (682683) on Wednesday May 09 2007, @12:11AM (#19048281) Homepage
      In theory, the Wikipedia version will constantly have "Bigfoot" added over and over again whereas the other one will not.
    • Heck, Wikipedia itself is well on its way. And it's available in practically every language spoken throughout the world.

  • It seems that many species would be extinct by the time they finish this in 10 years. Why not just make it a wiki and then it could be completed in a fraction of the time and perhaps not as many species would be extinct by the time their entry is completed. Or just find a way to do it faster without compromising the integrity of the entries

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Why not just make it a wiki...

      Yeah, and watch web pages sprout up featuring rare species like Cowboyus Nealicus, Scuttle Monkey, and the Zonk Toad.

        • A particular species going extinct is *not* inherently bad. It happens all the time as conditions change across the world. Totally natural. OK, so it is happening a little (ok, a lot) more then usual now. Still isn't inherently bad - even mass extinctions happen on a regular basis, and end up with more highly evolved species in the end.

          Ok. So, if your species goes extinct, it's not a bad thing. Right?

          Oh, wait... you don't want to die? You want your offspring and family to survive? Well, I have a new

  • Mostly Harmless

  • Internet pages (Score:5, Funny)

    by Yath (6378) on Tuesday May 08 2007, @11:02PM (#19047881) Journal
    From the press release:

    Over the next 10 years, the Encyclopedia of Life will create Internet pages for all 1.8 million species currently named.


    These Internet pages, are they something I'd need an Internet browser to enjoy?

  • What About... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 08 2007, @11:04PM (#19047891)
    the tree of life project: http://tolweb.org/tree/phylogeny.html [tolweb.org]

  • Heh... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Nick_13ro (1099641) on Tuesday May 08 2007, @11:23PM (#19048003)
    Call me when they have added Big Foot footage. Until then watching Bush on TV will be enough zoo time for me.

  • Already being done (Score:3, Informative)

    by jaiagreen (1099645) on Tuesday May 08 2007, @11:40PM (#19048103)
    Discoverlife.org has been doing something very similar for several years and claim to have cataloged over a million species.
  • I'm going to list my sightings of, let's see, that's an Indian Mynah Acridotheres tristis, and a household rat rattus rattus. Oh, and there's a dog next door, and we have a cat.
    Here's to participating in important research!
    • Let me be the first to congratulate you to your personal ultimate contribution to research! But how empty will your life not be when you have past your prime. ;-)

      Jokes aside, maybe not everyone realises that in some areas amateurs can actually make useful scientific contributions, especially when it comes to field work. I'm guessing that the ones that have the best chanes of doing something useful are amateur botanists and entymolgists. Other examples might be ornithologists and herpetologists.

      So what

  • But... (Score:5, Funny)

    by kitsunewarlock (971818) on Tuesday May 08 2007, @11:45PM (#19048137) Journal
    I wonder if creationists in the future might later claim that the website didn't take 10 years to compile, but was created in a day...

  • Web 2.0 (Score:5, Funny)

    by Comatose51 (687974) on Tuesday May 08 2007, @11:46PM (#19048143) Homepage
    And for the web 2.0 version, I'll make a mash-up between that and hotornot.com where the user can rate the animal on perceived taste from "Yuck" to "Let's farm these suckers" to "Will all be eaten before domestication".

  • Storytime (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zombie_striptease (966467) on Tuesday May 08 2007, @11:50PM (#19048153)

    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.

    • I, for one, welcome our new giant blue legged asphalt sucking grasshopper overlords.
    • .. and send the pic to the biology dept of your local university. They'll probably be happy to identify the species for you - especially if you tell them you've looked around but couldn't identify it.

      (Oh - and a large, unknown-until-now species of grasshoppers in the Pacific Northwest doesn't sound very probable. But hey - you never know!!)

    • Re:Storytime (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ibentmywookie (819547) on Wednesday May 09 2007, @02:01AM (#19048781)
      Would be really cool if you could upload a photo of the insect/animal, and have the website find matches. Not sure how far research has come with finding similar images. It would have to try and determine the part of interest, and then search on colours, shapes, etc... not sure. But it would be a very interesting research project.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by femto (459605)

      Except the Encyclopedia of Life will be a catalogue, not an identification key.

      A catalogue simply records that a species exists and is usually organised by scientific name. You can't find something unless you know its full name, or are prepared to flick through and compare your find with 1.8 million entries.

      An identification key on the other hand is organised to answer the question "What is that?", a bit like trying to guess what animal someone is thinking of by asking them questions. A key allows you

    • Take a good picture and post the bug image to BugGuide [bugguide.net]!
  • It would add tremendously to its usefulness if they could include high quality pictures of the specimens in the great museum collections. Especially for stuff like birds, butterflies, beetles where there's a lot of diversity and variations. There's no mention of this being done in the EOL FAQ. I'm aware that it take plenty more resources to do this but it will be worthwhile. There's still new discoveries hidden in those vast museum collections.

  • why so long? (Score:5, Funny)

    by misanthrope101 (253915) on Wednesday May 09 2007, @12:09AM (#19048273)

    ...the project is expected to take about 10 years to complete...
    What's the holdup? It only took Noah a few days to get them all on a boat, and we can't even make a list? This is really making us look bad, people. He even had to figure out care and feeding, but we can't even get a list of names together. Sheesh. We're really going downhill here.

  • Poor choice of acronym? (Score:5, Funny)

    by moosesocks (264553) on Wednesday May 09 2007, @12:17AM (#19048317) Homepage
    Anybody who's ever worked in sales or IT is going to be understandably agitated by their choice of acronym [wikipedia.org] for the project, especially considering the subject matter [wikipedia.org] at hand.

  • Google (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Tree131 (643930) on Wednesday May 09 2007, @12:22AM (#19048355)
    I wouldn't be surprised if Google got behind the funding and made it super-searchable... :)

  • At last, a self-limiting database! (Score:5, Funny)

    by ydra2 (821713) on Wednesday May 09 2007, @01:02AM (#19048543)
    A database that will get smaller over time instead of always growing out of it's disk space! Do your part to help by killing everything you don't recognize as a member of your family.

    -- ydra

  • meh, 'All Species' anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 09 2007, @01:26AM (#19048647)
    I've described new species and worked in systematics for around the past 10 years. Of course by "all" them mean 'vertebrates', 'flowering plants' and some 'fish'. This sounds *a lot* like passed failed attempts, including the ill-fated All-Species project that was to be funded by .com millions. What most people don't realize is that many, perhaps most, of those 1.8 million species have terrible descriptions that may be hundreds of years old, and are basically represented by a name alone. While vertebrate taxonomy may be in the position to build comprehensive species pages that might be useful in this context, the real diversity lies in elsewhere (insects, bacteria, etc.), and remains for all intents and purposes undescribed (based on estimated total species). Look closely, this effort will be data-base related, and will try to federate already populated lists of names, and simply gathered data (i.e. stuff that won't be of any use to the practicing scientist). It will be woefully underfunded, and very little money will make its way to the people who can make a difference- practicing taxonomists. Want to make a difference with respect to biodiversity? Fund the people on the ground (and institutions, i.e. research collections) doing the work of describing what is new.
             
  • Should've used a boat instead.
    • Maybe not but by the time it finally loads up, it will become totally irrelevant. All the species will be gone.
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