Earth's Species To Be Cataloged On the Web

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."

But hasn't The Guide already said it in two words?

[Lawn Jocke]

Mostly Harmless

Re:10 years v. Extinction Rate

[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.

Internet pages

[Yath]

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?

Plaease stop evolving now...

[Harmonious Botch]

We can't keep up!

Re:Isn't it already a part of Wikipedia?

[UbuntuDupe]

May the fittest survive!

Heh...

[Nick_13ro]

Call me when they have added Big Foot footage. Until then watching Bush on TV will be enough zoo time for me.

Re:Isn't it already a part of Wikipedia?

[Anonymous Coward]

Speaking of, I believe the number of African elephants has tripled in the past six months.

But...

[kitsunewarlock]

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

[Comatose51]

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".

Re:Man I just had a moment

[bprice20]

I just had my first "damn I wish they had this when I was in grade school" moment. Next there will be a you spoiled kids don't know how to work for your knowlege moment.

why so long?

[misanthrope101]

...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.

Re:Isn't it already a part of Wikipedia?

[Tatarize]

In theory, the Wikipedia version will constantly have "Bigfoot" added over and over again whereas the other one will not.

Poor choice of acronym?

[moosesocks]

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.

Re:Plaease stop evolving now...

[Headcase88]

Homer: "Now, honey, poachers are nature's way of keeping the balance. Whenever there are so many species that people get confused and angry, a poacher is born."

Special thanks to snpp [snpp.com].

To Serve Man

[pchan-]

I hope they don't forget to include a field describing how delicious each life-form is (and perhaps how it is best served).

Re:To Serve Man

[LordCrank]

Hopefully they'll start with homo sapiens, I know a few people who have been dying for a new recipe

Re:Storytime

[poor_boi]

I, for one, welcome our new giant blue legged asphalt sucking grasshopper overlords.

At last, a self-limiting database!

[ydra2]

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

Re:Isn't it already a part of Wikipedia?

[vux984]

The elephant population will be a lot more dynamic too on the wikipiedia one.

Wheee

[durin]

Perhaps we'll discover intelligent life on earth at long last.

Tell me When...

[craagz]

There is an entry for FireFox.. that Red Orange plumed animal that is famouss for its nightly browsings and daylight spankng of IE