Wikispecies
2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Websites and the Internet
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| URL | http://species.wikimedia.org/ |
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| Commercial? | No |
| Type of site | Species directory |
| Registration | Optional |
| Owner | Wikimedia Foundation |
| Created by | Jimmy Wales and the Wikimedia Community |
Wikispecies is a project supported by the Wikimedia Foundation that anybody can edit. It is an open, free directory of species.
Typical species page
A typical species page would have sections called taxonavigation, vernacular names, alternative classifications, references, notes, and maybe a description of the species. Vernacular names are links to Wikipedia articles in many languages.
Community Portal
The Wikispecies Community Portal has many links to things which one would need in order to increase his knowledge about the Wikispecies procedures.
The Wikispecies Village Pump is an area of Wikispecies that discusses the project. It is like a Wikipedia article's talk page. Currently it is the largest page on Wikispecies.
The Wikispecies Charter is the basis of Wikispecies. The Charter was written by Jimbo Wales.
The Charter says:
"Note from Jimbo Wales...
- As you know, the creation of this project was somewhat controversial in some quarters, and so I propose an early development of a strong non-forking policy guideline here, illustrating how wikispecies significantly differs from articles that would appear in a general encyclopedia.
- Here are some of the key points that the board put forward when we approved this project:
- We set up the WikiSpecies wiki for biologists to begin organizing the project.
- We propose that as the software is developed, it should work to strongly support integration with wikipedia, to help avoid duplication of effort, i.e. to avoid forking.
- We ask the participants on wikispecies to think particularly about how their work should differ from a generalist encyclopedia."
- Here are some of the key points that the board put forward when we approved this project:
Other languages
Wikispecies is available in 131 different languages which are also licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.