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Wikispecies

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Wikispecies
The current Wikispecies logo
Screenshot
Detail of the Wikispecies main page.
Screenshot of species.wikimedia.org home page on 3 May 2011
Type of site
Species directory
OwnerWikimedia Foundation
Created byBenedikt Mandl (proposed project in 2004); Jimmy Wales and the Wikimedia community
URLspecies.wikimedia.org
CommercialNo
RegistrationOptional
Launched2004

Wikispecies is a wiki-based online project supported by the Wikimedia Foundation. Its aim is to create a comprehensive open content catalogue of all species; the project is directed at scientists, rather than at the general public. Jimmy Wales stated that editors are not required to fax in their degrees, but that submissions will have to pass muster with a technical audience.[1][2] Wikispecies is available under the GNU Free Documentation License and CC BY-SA 3.0.

Started in September 2004, with biologists around the world invited to contribute,[3] the project had grown a framework encompassing the Linnaean taxonomy with links to Wikipedia articles on individual species by April 2005.[2]

Discover more about Wikispecies related topics

Wiki

Wiki

A wiki is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the public or limited to use within an organization for maintaining its internal knowledge base.

Wikimedia Foundation

Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., or Wikimedia for short and abbreviated as WMF, is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California and registered as a charitable foundation under local laws. Best known as the hosting platform for Wikipedia, a crowdsourced online encyclopedia, it also hosts other related projects and MediaWiki, a wiki software.

Species

Species

In biology, a species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology, behaviour, or ecological niche. In addition, paleontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined.

Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Donal Wales, also known on Wikipedia by the pseudonym Jimbo, is an American-British Internet entrepreneur, webmaster, and former financial trader. He is a co-founder of the online non-profit encyclopedia Wikipedia and the for-profit wiki hosting service Fandom. He has worked on other online projects, including Bomis, Nupedia, WikiTribune, and WT Social.

Fax

Fax

Fax, sometimes called telecopying or telefax, is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material, normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other output device. The original document is scanned with a fax machine, which processes the contents as a single fixed graphic image, converting it into a bitmap, and then transmitting it through the telephone system in the form of audio-frequency tones. The receiving fax machine interprets the tones and reconstructs the image, printing a paper copy. Early systems used direct conversions of image darkness to audio tone in a continuous or analog manner. Since the 1980s, most machines transmit an audio-encoded digital representation of the page, using data compression to more quickly transmit areas that are all-white or all-black.

GNU Free Documentation License

GNU Free Documentation License

The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and derivatives to be available under the same license. Copies may also be sold commercially, but, if produced in larger quantities, the original document or source code must be made available to the work's recipient.

Biologist

Biologist

A biologist is a scientist who conducts research in biology. Biologists are interested in studying life on Earth, whether it is an individual cell, a multicellular organism, or a community of interacting populations. They usually specialize in a particular branch of biology and have a specific research focus.

Linnaean taxonomy

Linnaean taxonomy

Linnaean taxonomy can mean either of two related concepts:The particular form of biological classification (taxonomy) set up by Carl Linnaeus, as set forth in his Systema Naturae (1735) and subsequent works. In the taxonomy of Linnaeus there are three kingdoms, divided into classes, and they, in turn, into lower ranks in a hierarchical order. A term for rank-based classification of organisms, in general. That is, taxonomy in the traditional sense of the word: rank-based scientific classification. This term is especially used as opposed to cladistic systematics, which groups organisms into clades. It is attributed to Linnaeus, although he neither invented the concept of ranked classification nor gave it its present form. In fact, it does not have an exact present form, as "Linnaean taxonomy" as such does not really exist: it is a collective (abstracting) term for what actually are several separate fields, which use similar approaches.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system called MediaWiki. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read reference work in history. It is consistently one of the 10 most popular websites ranked by Similarweb and formerly Alexa; as of 2023, Wikipedia was ranked the 5th most popular site in the world. It is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, an American non-profit organization funded mainly through donations.

History

Benedikt Mandl co-ordinated the efforts of several people who are interested in getting involved with the project and contacted potential supporters in early summer 2004. Databases were evaluated and the administrators contacted, some of them have agreed on providing their data for Wikispecies. Mandl defined two major tasks:

  1. Figure out how the contents of the data base would need to be presented—by asking experts, potential non-professional users and comparing that with existing databases
  2. Figure out how to do the software, which hardware is required and how to cover the costs—by asking experts, looking for fellow volunteers and potential sponsors

Advantages and disadvantages were widely discussed by the wikimedia-I mailing list. The board of directors of the Wikimedia Foundation voted by 4 to 0 in favor of the establishment of Wikispecies. The project was launched in August 2004 and is hosted at species.wikimedia.org. It was officially merged to a sister project of the Wikimedia Foundation on September 14, 2004.

  • On October 10, 2006, the project exceeded 75,000 articles.
  • On May 20, 2007, the project exceeded 100,000 articles with a total of 5,495 registered users.
  • On September 8, 2008, the project exceeded 150,000 articles with a total of 9,224 registered users.
  • On October 23, 2011, the project reached 300,000 articles.
  • On June 16, 2014, the project reached 400,000 articles.
  • On January 7, 2017, the project reached 500,000 articles.
  • On October 30, 2018, the project reached 600,000 articles, and a total of 1.12 million pages.
  • On December 8, 2019, the project reached 700,000 articles, and a total of 1.33 million pages.
  • On January 8, 2021, the project reached 750,000 articles, and a total of 1.5 million pages.
  • On April 16, 2022, the project reached 800,000 articles, and a total of 1.67 million pages.[4]

As a database for taxonomy and nomenclature, Wikispecies comprises taxon pages, and additionally pages about synonyms, taxon authorities, taxonomical publications, type material, and institutions or repositories holding type specimen.[5]

Policies

Wikispecies has disabled local upload and asks users to use images from Wikimedia Commons. Wikispecies does not allow the use of content that does not conform to a free license.

Source: "Wikispecies", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, January 29th), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikispecies.

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References
  1. ^ "Calling all taxonomists". Science. 307 (5712): 1021. 2005. doi:10.1126/science.307.5712.1021a.
  2. ^ a b "WikiSpecies". American Scientist Online. Sigma Xi. 25 April 2005. Archived from the original on 30 April 2005. Retrieved 3 February 2014.
  3. ^ Peplow, Mark (15 March 2005). "Species list reaches half-million mark". Nature. doi:10.1038/news050314-6.
  4. ^ "Statistics". Wikispecies.
  5. ^ "Wikispecies:Page types". Wikispecies.
External links

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